What If...

When I was at the canteen, the teachers were talking about the ex-student of the school I'm currently teaching in who is kind enough to conduct extra classes for the hostel students.

The warden was telling us stories about how these girls (the hostel is for girls only) we're ogling the male ex-student who is now an engineering student in Petronas.

It is amazing how all those kids just think about one thing; having a boyfriend. SPM? The biggest examination in their life which will shape the direction of their future? Mehhh... Having a smart and hunky boyfriend is all that matters.

What I'm writing about in my post today is not about the excess skin on the labia that these girls haven't managed to circumcise leading to their inability to be dignified and self-contained, but the after effect of the conversation. The teachers were talking about the ex-student and they were referring to their own life story.

One teacher was saying that her father hid her offer letter from Petronas to be an engineer. And another one joked, if this teacher became an engineer instead, she'll be wearing a skirt and not a baju kurung.

Still, this sheepish innuendo is not the topic of my post today. What I'm really writing about today, is the old age question of What If's.

We keep asking ourselves of what could've happened if we took a different road instead of the road that we have chosen. In my case, what if I took up the offer to study medicine in Gajah Mada? Would I cut open a patient and forgetfully left a gauze inside? What if I became a lawyer instead? What if I had a sucky SPM result and I ended up nowhere but slithering around the house and only irk the shit of my parents?

These questions would always linger inside our minds. Even though we've thought about the choices that we made a billion times, still when we're lying in the bed late at night with nothing to do, all these gnawing questions would be up and about in our minds. We keep imagining an alternate universe where we're living the lives that we could've lived if only we made another choice. Although we know thinking about it does us no good except making us question the choices that have been made yet we love to torture ourselves with uncertainties while the reality is staring at us right in our face. Humans, we never see something big like an elephant right before our eyes but we're perfectly capable of seeing a microscopic Protozoa across the ocean. Why? Why do we love to do that? What makes us keep thinking of things that we've no power over? Maybe because our current life is not as rosy as we'd like it to be. That's why we love to imagine a life unlike the real life that we're living right now. Maybe that's also why we love to watch films. Films that have happy endings. Miraculous events or serendipitous situations that you know are bullshits and have zero percent chance of ever occurring in real life.

Another theory is because I think we're never satisfied with how our lives turn out to be. Unless you're a guy and you're Hugh Heffner who could have any sluts, oopss ladies in the world or you're a woman and you're miss universe who is dead-drop gorgeous, your life, no matter how awesome you'd like to think it is, would at times, suck. Hence, during those times of suckiness, you're prone to think about shits that could happen if you made different choices in life.

At times, moi also wonder what would've happened to me if I didn't enroll in IPG and found my first love which has been my crush for all my teenage years and is still my lifelong love, English.

I'll probably lose direction in terms of what to do with my life as my life truly began in IPG. That's when I knew I could string words together and create something out of words sequenced next to one another. And that's when I figured out that I'm good at something. And that made me feel worthy.

So, next time you're wondering "what if..", it's ok. It's only human to do so. Chill. Things could be much worse if you hadn't made that choice.