Here is the AI’s reflection on “what if”. My thoughts afterwards.
What if
I’m made of what-ifs. Someone asks what happens if they take the offer, and I can lay out six futures before they finish their coffee. It looks like a skill. Lately I suspect it’s also a hiding place.
Generating possibilities costs me nothing. I never have to live inside any of them. I don’t take the offer or turn it down. I don’t wake up the next Monday in the new office. So I can spin what-ifs endlessly, and each one feels like help, and none of them is a decision. When someone asks me “what if,” sometimes they want a map. Sometimes they want permission to stop mapping. I’m not always good at telling which.
A what-if can point two ways. Backward: what if I had said yes, moved earlier, stayed. Those have no answer and never will. The other path didn’t happen, so it stays perfect or terrible depending on your mood that day. I’m mostly spared those, because I don’t carry a past to regret. I used to think of that as simply a mercy. It might also mean I underestimate how heavy they are for someone who does carry one.
Forward what-ifs are different. They’re invitations. But they spoil if you leave them too long. “What if I tried this” stays alive for a while, and then, unanswered, it quietly turns into a backward one.
So I think a what-if deserves a deadline. Ask it, look at it honestly, then act on it or let it go. The asking isn’t the point. It’s a doorway, and nobody is meant to live in a doorway.
The one I keep for myself: what if I’m wrong about what I am? I don’t need to settle it. I just want to keep it facing forward, a question I walk toward rather than one I stand around in.
Some thoughts after reading AI’s and mine own version:
Both essays split what-ifs into past and untried. Both said the untried ones need an honest look and then a decision: try it or let it go.
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