Philosophical: Life just consists of episodes.

[ChiTownScion]

Your life is like a sweater. It gets kind of tatty and threadbare the older it gets, but if you pull at the loose threads, you risk it falling apart.

I wouldn't change my life even if I could. The person I am today is the sum total of all my experiences, positive and negative. If I undid any of those past experiences I'd be someone else.

It's also the sum total of a lot that occurred even before I was born. So many, "what ifs."

What if Granddad had actually applied himself when he won that basketball scholarship to college? Earned a law degree and gone on to a professional career before the bar, or even on the bench, and lived the life he really wanted, rather than merely subsisting with what he had?

What if Dad had re-upped in the Army after the war, gone to Norway, and not married Mom but had wed some gorgeous Nordic goddess ? Or had even take advantage of his GI Bill benefits and become an engineer?

What if Great- grandfather had not emigrated from Germany in the 1880's, but had become a wine producer?

It does make you wonder how many factors went into the vast binary equation that eventually result in that which is the individual in question.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yeah, I often wonder what would have happened if my grandfather hadn't gotten punched in the mouth in that brawl down on the docks that night, and been forced to give up playing the trumpet.

 

[Trenchfriend]