What If...

I'm very curious by nature, and I love to know the answers to "Why" and "How". One of my favorite questions is "What if". I used to play this game called "What if..." It's not necessarily a game in that there's a winner or a loser. But it was something I did for fun to pass the time. I would come up with so many different "What if's..."

There were the questions that are absolutely absurd:

What if...

• there were no sidewalks anywhere?
• babies were born as 2 year olds?
• there were no dogs?
• the automobile was never invented?
• the sky was red all the time?

Then, there were the questions that seemed absurd at the time, but became reality:

What if...

• the planes fell from the sky?
• the bridge collapsed while we were driving over it?
• the roof caved in?

Unfortunately, 99% of these questions were directed at my sister. She tried to answer them honestly for years and years. But finally one day, she looked at me and quite seriously said, "We'd all be dead." I was so startled at her answer. I couldn't believe that everyone would really be dead if we only ate beef and never tried chicken. We certainly wouldn't all be dead if we didn't know how to use a computer. And we definitely wouldn't all be dead if every car in the world was orange!

See, she sort of got frustrated with all my questioning. It was non stop, over and over, my imagination would come up with so many questions. She got so tired of coming up with answers.

But now that I'm an adult, she is one of the first people I run my "What if's..." by. I reach out to her when I have big decisions to make. We run through scenarios of what could happen. But she never tells me "We'd all be dead." She knows that my questioning is helpful, and a good thing. She embraces my curiosity. She even encourages her own kids to question things.

I still, very much, enjoy questioning things. I love knowing why a process is done one way or another. I enjoy learning how things are completed from beginning to end. I just simply love learning.

Thankfully, the answer to my questions is very, very rarely "We'd all be dead."