What if?

In my living room I have a plaque that I purchased in New Zealand that says,” life is precious, make it count.” Now, this is something that I try to live by, which is why after 32 years on this earth I am still surprised by the amount of people around who live their life’s as what if people. You know the type, what if this, what if that etc? Focusing on what they think could have been instead of living in the here and now and making things happen.

Personally I am more of a doer, more of an if you don’t like it change it type. A person who believes that you get out of life what you put in and that yeah sometimes shit things happen that we can’t explain but it’s how you deal with it that counts. So although I am not a what if person the realisation that so many people are got me thinking about some of my life’s possible what ifs?

For example what if I had carried on dancing instead of stopping at 13 when I realised I would rather spend Saturdays with boys, make-up and friends (not much has changed there) than in a dance studio? Would I now be a successful dancer? Ok realistically with these boobs and this bum once puberty hit there was little chance of that happening, so the answer there is no.

Alright then, so what if, when I was 24 and went to Australia to see the then love of my life I had decided to stay out there. Would I be happily married to him, living there now, surrounded by lots of bambinos with Australian accents? Realistically, given that I called him the then love of my life I think we can all establish that no, I wouldn’t be. In fact in reality the chances are one of us would be dead (it was that kind of relationship, I think then I called it passionate, in hindsight I think it would be considered dysfunctional at best).

What if last Friday when I was talking to the man that I liked, if I hadn’t been drunk (see last week’s blog) would we now have been on a date? This one is a maybe, given that he had seemed keen up until the point of drunkenness it is a possibility, but, my view is it probably wouldn’t have worked out, due to the fact that in reality I sometimes get drunk and if he couldn’t handle me a bit tipsy he definitely wouldn’t be able to handle full on drunk Becky. So as the saying goes take me as I am or watch me as I walk away (or maybe stagger in this case).

Finally what if when I was younger I had worked harder at school and university would I be better off than I am now? Would I be running some big national corporation? I doubt it. Plus I think success comes in many forms, I have a job I love, a brilliant family, my health and amazing friends I wouldn’t swap any of that for all the national corporations, husbands in Australia and dancing stardom in the world.

So this week I challenge you that every time you want to think what if, try and think instead about what you do have and if the what if is so big that it keeps niggling away consider doing something that makes it into a ‘remember the day I did’ instead of a what if?