What if. . .

As I lay in bed the other night, engaged in my pre-slumber musings, a strange thought occured to me. It has actually come to my mind many times before, but I've never completed the thought. And it was: what if everything over the past four years or so has been a dream, and I wake up and I'm back to a day four years ago? I chose the four-year mark, because that was a pretty big turning point in my life.

I wondered if, having seen everything unfold in my life in the past four years, (in my supposed dream) I would make the same decisions I have made so far, or if, knowing the consequences, I would choose to go a different route. And it occured to me, that, despite hind sight being 20-20 and all, I would probably have made the exact same decisions. Not really because things couldn't have been better than the way they've turned out - quite the contrary, in fact. But because I think I would dismiss my "dream" as being just that - a dream, and hence of little consequence. And because I would convince myself that, in real life, things could not possibly work out the way they did in my "dream".

I would overestimate my strength, and my ability to deal with problems, and think that, in places in my "dream" where I fell apart, I would be able to cope just fine. I would overestimate my wisdom and the ability to do "the right thing", and believe that I would act with caution, and know when to get out of a sticky situation. And I would overestimate my levelheadedness (which, dream or no dream, would have been a far-fetched assumption!), and think that I would always remain rational and think with my head.

But I think most people would do the same, no? I don't believe in destiny and all that, but I do believe that we are all somehow wired to make certain kinds of choices, and that these choices are what lead us to the situations we get into, and ultimately to the kind of life we lead. So, when it comes to making decisions, we will almost always choose to go a certain direction.

Which is why, no matter what happens, and how many "dreams" I have, I will always remain an impulsive character that, when faced with a choice to think with my head or my heart, will throw caution to the winds (pardon the cliche) and choose that wretched heart, and inevitably land up in trouble.