By Chance – What If?

It’s so funny the way some things turn out. One tiny action can change the course of your life forever. We experience so many of those instances, but I don’t think we always realize just how freakish it is.

Sometimes, it’s almost inevitable to cross paths with some people. It feels like you were meant to meet them. Your coworkers or your classmates, for example; they were already there (or it might’ve been you) and it’s easy to predict you’ll see one another every day after that and will probably become close friends. Still met by chance, but it was more of a forced interaction. The event could make sense when explained.

On the other hand, there are moments when you barely brush shoulders with a stranger and yet it may be them who’ll leave the most impactful mark in your life, good or bad.

I could come up with a few examples from my own life experiences, but there’s this one time in particular that I find myself going back to in my head, perhaps wishing I could somehow change the outcome.

When over-analyzing that day, I wonder:

what if I hadn’t been spontaneous that day?
what if I hadn’t agreed to flow with the wind and allow it to play with my hair and caress my skin?
what if my friend had listened to me about not approaching every stranger?
what if at that moment I had been sitting at a different spot or been in the water when he walked in?
what if instead of going out that day we had stayed in?
What if?

I know, I know — no use in wondering about the what-ifs, but this is a kind of different what-if, the kind that cannot be reversed but which could help you stay out of trouble next time because you will have learned your lesson (although it wasn’t all that bad of an outcome in my case). Sometimes you just can’t help but wonder how much different things could have been if for a split second you changed direction.

Do you think everything happens by chance? Or is anything really meant to be?