I can remember my very first “what if” moment! When I was around five or six, my mother and I were driving down a road and there was a truck in front of us. I can remember it like it was yesterday. It was carrying long section of pipe around 2 inches in diameter and all of a sudden a section of the pipe came loose and flew through the windshield of our car! Let’s put this in perspective! It didn’t just come through the windshield. It came through the windshield, front seat, back seat, and through the trunk! Here’s my “what if” moment. My mother and I had been talking as we often did on our car rides back in those early years. I used to like to snuggle up to her and put my head on her side and listen to her breathe and her heartbeat. For some unknown reason right at that moment I slid over to the passenger window to look at something outside. If I hadn’t moved over those few inches my life would have ceased! Dead, gone, and buried for the rest of time! That’s when I learned about “what if”! We all have had these moments, what if I had done this, or what if I had done that. Would things be different than they are now? You bet they would. I can’t count the number of times and situations that I encountered that have altered results because I chose for some reason to what if it! A prime example was in Viet Nam. One of my fellow Marines could be walking 10 yards back over the same piece of terrain that I had just traveled on and step on a land mine and be maimed forever or killed. It was hard to understand but “what if” it had been me. It’s a tough concept to understand but over time I began to realize that there was something more powerful going on. Some choose to call it fate while others choose to say shit happens but I, the different kind of thinker, chose to call it my “what if” moments. I believe that all things happen for a reason and purpose and “what if” moments are no different. The big question that arises out of this pattern of thought is, “What is the purpose.” I’ve come to the conclusion that we aren’t supposed to know. As we live each moment to the fullest, like we are expected to do, life unfolds like a well-developed plan. “What if-ing” things has always been a part of my thought process. What if I choose this or what if I do that differently? This has sculpted my thought process and has brought me to think in a different way, always exploring the different side of the unknown. I have never feared and have embraced my way of thinking but it sure has stirred up some conventional thinker’s brains!
