A friend of mine bucked the trend and bought some gold a little while ago, seeing a 5% negative return on his investment so far, with the "trend" up 100% in the same timeframe. I asked him if he has any regrets in not buying a little crypto instead, putting a small percentage of his investments in to see what it was all about. He says no, but I did detect a little bit of a somber tone in his voice as he said it. The great unvoiced, "What ifs" of life.
I think that in my life, the "what if" that has affected me the most is, what if I never got sick?
I got ill young, it held me back a year at high school and impacted on my university studies and held me back heavily in my career, both physically and mentally - and it still affects me today. They say "health is wealth" which most take to mean that being healthy is valuable, but not many people seem to think about the value of a healthy mind and body. For me sure, it feels better to be healthy, but where it is most valuable is in the ability to work at something, to perform valuable tasks. What is the point of being healthy if not doing anything?
As this is a counterfactual reflection, there is no way to know for sure what the cost is, but I know for sure that my health has been the single greatest influence on the direction my life has taken, for better and worse. The better is that I am stronger for it, that I have a decent sense of my meaning for life, I am able to work through pain and in general, I think that I am a better person for it. But the costs have been heavy and early on, with no diagnosis and my body crumbling to dust, my thoughts followed suit.
It is hard to get much done from that darkness and it is very easy to feel like a victim in the world. I am not depressive by nature, but I was definitely depressed and it took quite a lot of time to pull myself out of the funk and even longer to learn how not to be pulled back in.
As said, the costs have been severe in many ways, but is impossible for me to quantify. I have always imagined though that if I had been healthy, things would have been different, but it is really hard to say if the decisions I would have made in the alternate reality would have led to a better or worse result. I don't have regrets from the experience, though I do feel stupid for not finding a better path sooner.
I am not bitter, I do not see myself as a victim, I am stronger.
Sometimes I also hypothesize that if I had never been ill, I wouldn't have built up the resilience I have and while it falters often enough to keep me on my toes, it has also underpinned my experience at the most difficult times in my life. I believe that without having a decent level of grit, I would have behaved quite differently toward some of the things I have faced personally and with my family.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention, but it is also the shovel used to dig deep into ourselves in order to withstand what the world throws our way. It doesn't matter how difficult circumstances are, it is how we respond to them that matters and perhaps, what defines us. This isn't to say that we are only a sum of our actions, but our actions represent us in the moment and we can learn from them and build a better reaction in the next movement, if we are paying attention.
This is why the "what if I could go back in time and do differently" is such a big part of cultural thought, as when we reflect, we look at the past knowing what the person we were at that time, didn't know. In some way, it is like knowing the lottery numbers ahead of time and which investments are guaranteed to succeed. But we can never go back, only forward, hoping that we have learned enough that we can make better decisions in the future.
The lottery numbers are always an unknown and subject to a strict probability, but potential successful investments are somewhat predictable, if paying attention. I have missed a lot of opportunities to invest myself in my past, many misses justified through real conditions, many through perceived obstacles - but I am slowly learning.
I said to my friend, why don't you put a few hundred into crypto just to see and his reply was, "what is the point, a few hundred is insignificant to me, even with large percentage gains".
That isn't the point though.
Taking part is the point. Learning is the point. Understanding what has been overlooked is the point. As I said to him, only once you have really investigated it, will you know whether you want to put more in or retract your position, will you have an idea of what can be known. From the outside it is impossible to know and you will always have the "what if" with no potential to answer the question, it will always be completely hypothetical, until you do.
Society has done a great job of putting those who succeed up on pedestals and ridiculing those who fail - without realizing that they are the same kinds of people, who for whatever reason, made a decision. So many people are so scared of the sense of failure, they will not make a decision until forced, making the decision not theirs at all - no ownership. When we are moved by forces we do not understand, we can feel like victims, but looking back knowing more than we did, we will probably recognize there were better courses of action available, we just weren't ready to see them.
But, what if we had been?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]