Wednesday, May 26, 2010

"What If"... Two Words That Can Do More Harm Than Good

This is really late for me to be up tonight, and I have a feeling I am going to really regret it, but sometimes there are moments when writing, blogging, journaling, are all I can think about doing... and I like to savor those moments, because usually something pretty great comes out of it. It may be just a line or it could be the whole thing I have splurged in the moment. Even though I never thought of myself as a journalist, and I would never want to really go into that field of work, I do enjoy writing things down when something interests me. I enjoy pondering a line in a song, or a stanza of a poem, or something that I noticed while paying attention to nature, or a quote from a movie that touched me in some way. They are all simple enough, but I can let myself wonder about them for a long time until I write it out on paper.

Tonight I watched the movie "Letters to Juliet" (which I have to say may be a new favorite movie of mine), and there was a quote from that movie that really touched me. I would love to copy and paste it onto this blog, but there are no movie quotes published for it yet on the internet, but I will be posting it whenever they get around to doing so. In this particular quote it talked about the words "what" and "if." Now these two are not at all scary or hurtful while separated, but when you put the two words together, "what if," then a person could make themselves go mad with curiosity... there are so many times I second guess myself and wonder what if I had done something a different way how it would have turned out. The problem with thinking about the words "what if" all the time is that I end up not enjoying what I do have. I let myself go off into an imaginary world of endless possible outcomes, none of which really matter since they are not my actual reality.

Everyday choices are what we all have to make, and live with the outcomes. What I eat for breakfast, who I choose to hang-out with, when I get around to paying my bills, signing up for classes, allowing myself to fall in love... As easy as it is to let my mind think about how I could have chosen things differently, in the end it usually only brings heartache... and I do not need to much of that anymore. That is why I try to avoid the words "what if" because I need to be more attentive to how I can fix some mistakes I made than think about what I should have done. I cannot change the past, but I can find a way to change my future...

With that being said, I am now ready for a good night's sleep....

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