"What if..."

24th December - Christmas Eve. Funny how I couldn't have been further away from where I was a year ago today and yet still be in the same place. Yet another mention of how much things change in a year. Nevertheless, I'm here now.

If there was one thing I'd want for Christmas (not necessarily Christmas - anytime would be good seeing that this is something I've been thinking about for a long time) is a device that shows the different outcomes to questions of "what if" (like the What-If Machine from Futurama). 

Wouldn't it be interesting if we could see how different our lives would be had we chose a different path or what would the world be like if we did/didn't...or what if the world was different from how we know it to be like today? Telly (among other things) tells me that I'm not the first one to have thought such a thought (quite obviously).

The following list of shows all explore the different scenarios of "what if": Anthology of Interest I and Anthology of Interest II (Futurama) - "What if Fry hadn't fallen into the freezer-doodle and come to the future-jiggy?", "What if Bender (the robot) was human?"; Road to the Multiverse (Family Guy) - "What if Christianity never existed?"; Turn Left (Doctor Who) - "What if Donna never met the Doctor?"; The One That Could Have Been (Friends) - "What if Rachel had married Barry?"; It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (The Muppets) - "What if Kermit (the frog) had not existed?"

The biggest "what if" I ponder on (like Kermit did in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie) is, "What if I didn't exist?" 
I wonder how different would the world be. On the grand scheme of things - (dare I say) perhaps not much different. Perhaps. Did I, even if a little bit, make a difference to the world? I can imagine that the lives around me would be somewhat altered. For one thing, my sister wouldn't be living with me now (seeing that I don't exist). Would she be in Perth at all? If not Perth, then where and doing what? The same thing she's doing now? My uni mates would have gotten a different group member for their project. Would they have done worse/better on the assignment? The lives that I've touched and the people I've met, even if for the briefest of moment, I was a presence in their timeline. How much of a difference did I make?

Questions of "what if" based on choices or events that could have gone differently (chronologically ordered from my earliest memories to now):
1. What if dad had chosen to do his Masters in UK instead of US? - Would I be speaking in a British accent and be saying words/terms like "blimey" and "absolute tosh" more often? (not that I say them much/at all now)
2. What if I didn't skip a grade? (having gone straight to grade 5 from grade 3) - Would I still have gotten the opportunity to study Engineering in Australia after high school on my scholarship? Would I be studying something completely different? Would I be somewhere else entirely now?
3. What if I chose not to be a prefect in high school? - How different would my high school life have been? Would that choice have changed the person I am today?
4. What if I had gone to University of Melbourne instead of University of Western Australia? (like I wanted to) - I would have met different people, done different things, lived a different life. How different would that life have been like?
5. What if I chose to not have gone to event A/B/C and I've never met you, you, or you? 

Other questions of "what if's":
1. What if I had 2 siblings instead of just 1? What if I had an elder brother or a younger sister? What if I had both? What if I was a boy?
2. What if they've discovered electricity 100 years earlier?
3. What if the internet never existed? - Well, this blog wouldn't be around for one thing.
4. What if Steve Jobs never came up with the idea of Apple?
5. What if apes ruled the world?

It's an infinite list of what if's and such is life, many of the questions will go unanswered. Because such a device does not exist (yet - that I know of anyway), we can only wonder (until such a device comes along) of what would have been and could be and that's all we're left with - wonderment.