What If?
It’s funny, isn’t it, how you can be perfectly happy with your life but still wonder sometimes, what if?
I’m perfectly happy working as a librarian. I’ve been reading ever since the lightbulb went on over my head and I figured out how to put the little black marks on the page together into words and the words into sentences. It wouldn’t be any sort of exaggeration to claim that since then, I’ve probably read for pleasure or enlightenment every single day of my life. Now, they give me money in exchange for being surrounded by books and talking about books and recommending books. THEY PAY ME to do what I’d be doing anyway!!! Perfect, right? Right!
But for a long time growing up, I wanted to be a paleontologist. I read all the books for kids and some for adults, watched all the Discovery Channel shows, was obsessed with the Natural History Museum when I lived outside D.C….I had a severe case of hero-worship for anyone in the field, and there were paleontologists who were like rock stars to me! For a school project one time, I wrote letters to paleontologists in universities across the country, asking them a set of questions, and was thrilled beyond belief when they replied! I couldn’t tell you when or why my ambitions changed, but I can tell you that I held onto the dino-love that lots of kids experience for much longer than most kids do, and that I still gravitate towards the subject when I look at National Geographic or Discovery online.
Today, I read an article referencing research being done by one of my rock-star paleontologist heros, Jack Horner, and for a moment, I went back to my childhood ambition of working with him in Montana, digging up T. Rex bones under the hot sun….and I felt a strange moment of disorientation, thinking of just how entirely, completely, and utterly different my life would have been. I wonder if it would have been good, if I would have been happy, if it would even have been better than what I have. Part of me thinks that of course not, I’d never have met some of my current friends, would never have met the man I’m engaged to and can’t imagine a life without. But of course, I would have met other friends, and maybe even another man to love (though , of course, that’s the hardest thing to imagine, because I’ve never been able to really see what it would be like to be this in love and loved until it happened, and I certainly can’t see what it would be like with someone else…nor do I really want to, to be honest.)
But would it have been better?
I guess, in the end, that’s a question without a meaning, or an answer. It would have been different, and just as full of life’s little tragedies and pleasures as the life I have now, I would probably have sat back on my heels at the dig site and wondered occasionally what if I’d become a librarian instead?
I’m perfectly happy working as a librarian. I’ve been reading ever since the lightbulb went on over my head and I figured out how to put the little black marks on the page together into words and the words into sentences. It wouldn’t be any sort of exaggeration to claim that since then, I’ve probably read for pleasure or enlightenment every single day of my life. Now, they give me money in exchange for being surrounded by books and talking about books and recommending books. THEY PAY ME to do what I’d be doing anyway!!! Perfect, right? Right!
But for a long time growing up, I wanted to be a paleontologist. I read all the books for kids and some for adults, watched all the Discovery Channel shows, was obsessed with the Natural History Museum when I lived outside D.C….I had a severe case of hero-worship for anyone in the field, and there were paleontologists who were like rock stars to me! For a school project one time, I wrote letters to paleontologists in universities across the country, asking them a set of questions, and was thrilled beyond belief when they replied! I couldn’t tell you when or why my ambitions changed, but I can tell you that I held onto the dino-love that lots of kids experience for much longer than most kids do, and that I still gravitate towards the subject when I look at National Geographic or Discovery online.
Today, I read an article referencing research being done by one of my rock-star paleontologist heros, Jack Horner, and for a moment, I went back to my childhood ambition of working with him in Montana, digging up T. Rex bones under the hot sun….and I felt a strange moment of disorientation, thinking of just how entirely, completely, and utterly different my life would have been. I wonder if it would have been good, if I would have been happy, if it would even have been better than what I have. Part of me thinks that of course not, I’d never have met some of my current friends, would never have met the man I’m engaged to and can’t imagine a life without. But of course, I would have met other friends, and maybe even another man to love (though , of course, that’s the hardest thing to imagine, because I’ve never been able to really see what it would be like to be this in love and loved until it happened, and I certainly can’t see what it would be like with someone else…nor do I really want to, to be honest.)
But would it have been better?
I guess, in the end, that’s a question without a meaning, or an answer. It would have been different, and just as full of life’s little tragedies and pleasures as the life I have now, I would probably have sat back on my heels at the dig site and wondered occasionally what if I’d become a librarian instead?