WHAT IF...

OUT there are brilliant people who write sophisticated essays, exalting in flights of fancy, that surely are meant to cause readers to be awestruck.

Not being thus brilliant,  I am reduced to "Doing it my way ;-)"! Oh well....

Do I feel that they have spent hours polishing, searching for just the most unusual words to express thoughts of the most literate? Yep. Maybe Avatars wrote them, instead ;-), who, absorbing mankind's emotions, are unable to actually process them in meaningful ways.

My flights of fancy usually are the WHAT IF..kind and expressed simply. As in what if I had done this or that, then or later.

 As in the way a friend traveled the earth on ships, working for awhile and sending postcards-yes, Virginia, actual written postcards with arrows pointing out: my hotel, my window, my whatever! Next, another postcard from a place far away. He tended to 'jump' ship wherever he wanted to 'experience' life there.

And so the postcards piled up-tracing his travels and causing me more WHAT IF moments.

• What if I had been, really had been, such an intrepid adventurer, I could have climbed Mts. Kenya and Kilimanjaro, instead of just looking at them from a distance on lucky sunny days?
• What if I could have gone on a foot safari to hunt lions, instead of perching safely, or so they told me, in a jeep getting close enough to watch lions having some fun :-), later fending off inquisitive baboons?
• And smartly getting out of the way of rampaging elephants-quietly grazing but exploding in fury in a second.
• What if I could have dug into the hole at Kimberley scrambling for diamonds, maybe finding a one or two, instead of buying some in the comfort of trader's shop?
• What if I could have written the definite novel, poem? Painted the insightful masterpiece, carved the monumental sculpture, or - heaven forbid - installed a meaningful 'installation', instead of just sedately enjoying pages of well phrased words, the beauty of arts-all conceived by someone else?
• What if I could have braved live and breathing bulls, instead of just watching the spectacle with heightened feelings of aficion?
• What if I could have written, played and /or sung music for opera and concerts, instead of only listening to it, albeit with much pleasure?
• What if I could have kayaked alone down trivers, instead of floating along in the luxury of riverboats?
• What if I could have hitchhiked the world for a year or more, instead of just to Italy and within Austria and Spain?
• What if I learned to skate, and competed for a medal, instead of just sitting comfortable (well wrapped up, of course) watching the scramble for it unfold, at Olympics, at Hockey games?

And the WHAT IFs just pile up.

No mere words, however sophisticated and learned, can tell me what I have missed by not doing "WHAT IF" when I could have!

Of course there are somethings I could NOT have done even IF-because they were NOT there in my youth... chunnel, high speed trains, the 'internet access for everyman', DVD, CDs, cellphones, iPod, iPad, Kindle, Simulcasts, SST (and that one NO longer is, alas), to name just a few.

And so much more will not be there any longer for the next generations' WHAT IFs.
It will be too late!