What If?

What if? Such a little phrase. Such life changing possibility. 

In the past, "What If's" have been associated with wishes or regrets. I've come to believe that neither do anybody any good. I've learned to turn wishes into goals, and regrets into experiences for growth. Can I honestly tell you I've been able to do that 100% of the time? No. Of course not. I am human. And a very flawed one at that. 

I've spent a lot of time thinking lately. Lucky for me, I can think and run at the same time. ;) A lot of my thoughts recently have been "What If". All this speculation has led me to self-reflection. Am I completely satisfied? What's my next step? What lies do I continue to tell myself? What do I need to do to continue to grow as a person? How do I become better? How do I keep putting one foot in front of the other and avoid tripping? These are just a few things that have been lapping around my exhausted mind over and over the past few weeks. 

Change. It's really fucking scary. But you come to points in your life when you realize you need it. You need it desperately, or those ignored "what if's" become regrets. Missed opportunities. You know you need something, but the fear paralyzes you. And then a whole new version of "what ifs" pop up. The negative kind that scare you into complacency. As much as I try to embrace failure, it still frightens me. Higher stakes means greater failures, but also much greater rewards. 

Where is the line between satisfaction and complacency? At what point does satisfaction become stagnation? An excuse that allows you to continue just existing at the minimum level. I don't want to be someone who looks at their life and waxes melancholy about missed opportunities. Opportunities I was too afraid to pursue. 

There's also the other belief that you create your own possibilities. A lot of famous/successful/rich/insert adjective here have maintained that their fame/success/wealth/insert noun here  has been 50% luck and 50% talent. Well, if you want to take a risk, how do you know luck is on your side? Do you have the right talent to pull over such great risks? And what happens if it isn't? 

See what I did there? "What if". You can spend your life wondering, or you can go after what you want. Accept the failures as avenues that didn't work. If the grass on the other side isn't as green as you had originally thought, water it. It's your grass now, and you can either work to make it the grass you want, or continue to stare wistfully at someone else's grass.