what if..

What if my family were all ordinary people..
Would I be ordinary, pleased by ordinariness and hence a happier person?
Would they not have been afflicted with air crashes, strange fatal diseases and suffering?

What if I let go of my mother when I was younger..
Would I have met someone in a strange city and been ‘normal’, i.e., had a couple of relationships by now?
Would I have stayed away from the people who loved me, made me love them, and then hurt me?
Would I have been smarter?

What if I had never been let down..
Would I be less suspicious, less cynical?

What if we were always happy people..
Would there be no hunger, poverty, over-population because of our selfishness?

What if we were not alone..
Would the other inhabitants of our spaces be our friends or foes?

What if I had not missed that flight to Sydney..
Would I have met my mentor or potential life partner in the check-in line?
What would I have done with the 300 dollars I would not have spent on another air ticket?

What if he hadn’t gotten on that flight..
Would he have picked other life partners for his children?
Would my sister and I even be here today?
Would we have curly hair, and me, a face like his which reminds my mother of him everyday?

What if I could forgive people, go easier on them..
Would that make me at peace with myself?
Would that lead them to hurt others or me again?

What if our lives were all written out..
Do our choices matter and do we make them?
Do we even matter at all or is it all for someone else’s supercalifragilistic plan?

What if none of us were really here, and we’re all imagining that our pain or happiness or ambition is the most important thing in the world?

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prompted by: deep