I, sometimes, wonder where I would be without those god-awful moments I have had to live through. Those tiniest moments of embarrassment that prevented me from standing before that one girl and asking her if we could go out. See, they might be tiny when the grand-view is in place but they make a huge difference. We cannot modify the past but our future propagates through our mistakes, our successes, our achievements and our failures. We are the culmination of years of chaos and in it we will perish one day. Though little is our significance, and little our time, this is all we have and in it the 'even little' make all the difference. In Frost's words "Two roads diverged in an yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both..", we have this entire alternate us left out from existing just because we took one of the two choices, failed to approach that girl and therefore left out on an entire experience - perhaps of hurt and pain or perhaps of eternal love, I will never know. And that is that. I will never know how it would've been like. It bugs me sometimes. It does feel unjust, doesn't it? It makes me feel unjust in that I didn't give that entire life a chance to exist. But a lone traveler, it was beyond me.
And, this applies for the good too. What if I didn't study this particular subject? What if on the day I was to be enrolled into college, I decided to give up studying and started running, say, a shop instead? The routine curses I'd throw at myself for that stupid decision, the dark future of self-loathing, inferiority... that life.. it is all beyond my reach now. In deciding a path, we set a future and the alternate us dies.
Perhaps in some dimension, I am a cruel dictator. Perhaps in some other ones, I am a movie director or even an actor.. the glamor, the fame, the flashes.. It's all beyond me now.
How, so one must ask, would I be if me changed places? Let's say with a better me? A me that has accomplished everything the here me assumes is the ultimate? Just switching places. What would I feel? Would I be happy in living that life or would I feel empty and therefore sad and utterly depressed in that I had nothing more to aspire to achieve (at least for the here me)? How would the other me feel? Would he try to change my here life into something better in his terms of betterment (like all the rich do.. charity, perhaps) or would he acknowledge that my lesser place in here is at least an opportunity to change and thus already an achievement? Would I try to change the street vendor me into becoming what I am here or would I accept that life is different for all and that all and everyone make a difference so I am important and thus the only change be in terms of positive energy? Would that wear me out? I could hold on to the feeling of awe and spiritual enlightenment for days perhaps but what when I break down which I do occasionally? How would I cope with that in a lesser status quo?
