The Artist Corner: What If

How many of us have played the what ifs? To answer that question I think that most of us still do. There is at every crossroads that we come to where we have to decide something. This creates the what if because in choosing one way you are saying no to the other path.

I think as we age, we look back at the choices that we have made and wonder if we made the right decision. One for me is what if I would not have moved to Halifax. Would I have been diagnosed with my mental health problem? There are all the things that happened as well during those years when I lived there.

We can only guess of how our lives would have been different and as well the life we are leading now would be. That is the thing about the what ifs. Living in the what ifs will bring on depression because we may think we would have been better off if we had taken the other road.

As we get into our mid life, we can look at how we got to where we are now. For me the decision to move to Halifax was to make sure I would not have the what ifs about one of my dreams. The sad thing is that it almost costed me my life. I learned from it and I have grown from that twenty-six-year-old to twenty years later where I am now an author.

Would I have become an author if I did not live the life that I have? The answer is hard to know because I lived those moments. If you ask someone if they would change any one moment in their life, most would and they would say yes very firmly.

What if you could do that, would you? This is where your true self takes shape since if you did choose to change that one event it would be changing who you are today. If you made your childhood different you would not be the person you are today.

For me, I have been asking the what ifs as I always realize that if one thing changed in my past I may have never picked up the pen or even left the west for Halifax. Everything from your past has shaped you into the person that you are today. Stand by your choices that you have made and try not to think about the what ifs because you made the choice that was right for you at that time in your life.

Stay safe.