what if

"But it is the mystery of life that sustains me now. And I look to the North and I wish again that there were two lives apportioned to every man, and every woman."
-- Pat Conroy

I have a friend who has entered into a dialogue with "What if?"
What if I had chosen a different profession. What if I had never married, or started a family. What if I had moved instead to another city? Who would I be, and what would my life be like now?
In the midst of some quick Google research the other day, my friend commented to the effect that "I need a lifetime off to learn all the stuff I don't know."

It was harder than I anticipated to find the Conroy quote printed above, and having finally found it I realize it doesn't encapsulate the idea as neatly as I thought -- the "what if" line of introspection has been a source of literary inspiration since the form existed, I suspect, and surely the mid-life crisis (whether real or imagined) has become an American cliche. But "what if" doesn't merely spring from a predictable confluence of age and circumstance. At the other end of the spectrum, it's philosophy itself, it's metaphysics, it's religion, it's every decent form of inquiry. What if what we see before us is not all there is?

In Conroy's novel "The Prince of Tides" (made into a truly schmaltzy film that shouldn't drive anyone away from the reading), the character of the narrator has an extramarital affair with his twin sister's psychotherapist. That's a distracting enough thought -- but the affair is just the vehicle for the narrator's mid-life-crisis attempt to save his own identity from the ruins of his past. His transformation ultimately leads him back to his family, into reconciliation with the past.
It's an easy enough choice superficially -- the character of the therapist isn't written with much more than symbolic allure -- and the affair isn't itself what brings the narrator around. But the whole novel is in some sense an example of how the "what if" question can both drive us to distraction and also bring us to heights of insight. Though the book shouldn't be read with that in mind, I'm interpreting though another veil of experience as well. In my experience, "mid-life" or "early mid-life" are just annoying phrases that popularize our tendency to doubt -- and to inquire -- and to use that mode of inquiry to make all sorts of wrong choices. Or right ones. Look at "The Razor's Edge" by Somerset Maugham, or "The Age of Innocence" by Wharton. Books I got married by, books I later made big mistakes by, in a sense. Because of asking "what if," things have happened in my life. When I stop asking, it's because I'm trying not to let anything happen -- I don't want to be tested.

Two lives apportioned to every man and woman -- it wouldn't be enough, of course, since the world wasn't made so simply as that. Even reincarnation doesn't guarantee enlightenment. And if asking "what if" isn't about finding the answer, what then is it about?

I told myself the last time I really struggled with it -- it's about living life as robustly and earnestly as possible, within the limits of what is decent and moral and just. It's about accepting that there is one life only, and really reaching every moment to grasp as much of it as one can. I suppose Conroy's novel comes to mind for me because nowhere have I chaffed more against the limits of what's possible than in the area of love. That's maybe my chief ignorance, and the subject I've bent myself to now as seriously as I can -- figuring out how many ways there are to love one another, without endangering love itself in the process. What if what we see is not all there is? What is the essential nature of "something more" and how can we perceive it without always being driven to possess it? It's not just about romantic love, eros, or a limiting of inquiry to the souls of men. But I suspect love is the balm on the wound of the unanswered question, if nothing else.

What if, what if. There's only two places to look for the answer: inside, and outside.