What If

Mama Kat – who by the way, sort of rocks – does a Writer’s Workshop every week.  I almost always play along, though more often than not, I do not publish them.  Not here, anyway.

I have a tendency to pick the most difficult prompts.  The brutally honest, no-holds-barred kind that are hard for me to get out and even harder to let go of once I do.  It’s therapeutic to write, and I’ve done this as long as I can remember with no need to broadcast it to the world.

But sometimes – sometimes – I wonder what would happen if I did.  What if I really did put it all out there, warts and all?  What would people think?  Would those that love me, stop?  Would they think that they never really knew me at all?  Would they be relieved to know that someone else thinks the same way they do?

I hold myself back for two reasons.  First, because if my life were ‘Sense and Sensibility’, I’d rather be Elinor than Marianne.  I’ve been Marianne and gotten burned.  Better to keep a tight rein on your emotions, I believe.  And second, because I have a ‘fake it ’til you feel it’ policy that I apply to instances when I fear my natural instinct might lead me astray.  Sometimes faking the right thing helps me feel the right thing.  Sort of like plastering a smile on your face until you actually feel happy.

So if I stopped holding myself back, what I might be putting ‘out there’ could be too much.  Too revealing, too personal, too hurtful.

Today isn’t the day I stop holding back, just in case that’s what you were waiting for.  But I wanted to share with you the prompt that rocked me last week.

1.) Lou Holtz (don’t ask me who that is) once said, “life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.” Do you believe this? Describe a time when you feel like you could have responded a different way and produced a different outcome.

Can you imagine the possibilities here? For 6 days now I have been considering the many directions my life could have taken, had I just done any one thing differently.

Every reaction, every decision, perhaps even every ‘avoidance of making a decision’ produces an outcome, so there are myriad opportunities for change.  One little choice that might have made all the difference in the world.

As a person who has always been intrigued by the concept of fate, this prompt especially appeals to me.

{Maybe I am revealing too much.  Fate and Christianity don’t necessarily go hand in hand, do they?}

Yes, there are many ‘What-Ifs’, and this past week I undoubtedly spent too much time considering them.  But introspection can be healthy, right?

Now I just need to look for the learning.

If you’d like to try this out yourself, Mama Kat posts her prompts on Tuesdays.