Today’s Bloganuary prompt asks “What could you do differently?”. Oh my word. This question must be out of the top-drawer of cold reading questions. A grand fishing expedition into the human condition. What unanticipated responses might it dredge up? What dark corners of each responders past might be dragged forth?
I guess the most obvious route I can take with this is the “sliding door” theme I explored quite recently. We all wonder about decisions we have made in the past - things we said, or didn’t say - things we did, or didn’t do.
In France there is a phrase for it - “l’esprit d’escalier” - “the wit of the staircase” - the things we wish we had said or done when it is too late to do so.
Of course some people defend their decisions with nonsense truisms such as “what will be will be”.
Everybody wonders “what if” though, don’t they?
What if we had told that person how much they meant to us during that pivotal time? What if we had shown our true thoughts? What if we had gotten over ourselves for a few moments. In those moments history might have changed enormously. Pandoras box.
If the “multiverse” theories are true, then all outcomes happen - but of course we only see the one we think we are choosing. Would it be wrong to be jealous of the other you that was more brave? That took chances? That changed their stars? Or would the other you envy the quiet, largely trouble-free route that might have happened if they had not been so bloody stupid?
We’ll never know.
Perhaps my answer to “what could you do differently” is that I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do anything differently. Every decision, adventure, story, friendship, relationship, and emotion that makes me “me” has happened because of the choices I made. If not for the story woven behind me, I wouldn’t be “me” - I would be somebody else - and countless histories intersecting mine would have exploded in different directions too.
I like that things go wrong. Happiness cannot exist without sadness. Hope cannot exist without regret. The yearning is the best part. The wonder about what might be - not about what I might have said or done - is wistful, romantic even. Of course being brave enough to find out what might be is a very different proposition.
And yet sometimes we can see the sliding door. We know that an inflection point is before us. And we do nothing. We watch as the timeline unfurls, taking no part. And we sometimes wish we had.
John Keating’s line from Dead Poet’s Society comes to mind once again:
“the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”