What if?

What if? It’s such a simple question, but possibility entangles itself in the white space between the letters. If you speak the words out loud … slowly … you can actually hear it on your breath … whhhhhaaaaaaat iiiiiiiiiiiif? Try it. Go ahead, say it out loud …. Slower ... Take a moment to sit in the substance of that question.

A few years ago, I stood in my bathroom thinking about the possibility of a new relationship in my life. An important relationship … one that I really wanted with someone who was already important to me. As my stomach churned over the idea of this happening, I sat on the edge of my tub. “Why do I even want this?” At that moment, opposing things pressed in towards me. The first was possibility. The possibility of fun, adventure, love, and connection. But coming at me with even more force, was the fear and the anxiety. The fear of risking myself … of facing rejection, even of admitting that this was something I wanted in my life. 

The fear of pain.

It was at this pivotal moment, sitting on the edge of my bathtub, that the thought came to me.  What if it could be different?  What if there was a way to move past this anxiety, this fear … into a place of real possibility, adventure, excitement? 

What if it wasn't the same old love?

Possibility is like water, once it finds a way in, it won’t stop. It finds the tiniest crack that eventually morphs into a hole. The hole becomes bigger and the bigger it gets, the more forceful the water gets. You can’t stop water once it finds its way. And you can’t stop possibility. This is what happened to me that day.

Possibility found a crack in my defenses and it began to erode my beliefs:

That relationship is hard.

That I have to protect myself. 

That I need others to prove themselves to me.

That trust is something to be earned. 

That pain is to be avoided.  

After that, it didn’t take long for possibility to change the way that I thought about relationship, entirely. The waters of possibility are strong and rushing and they overwhelm everything quickly.

When you allow possibility in, it doesn’t just show up in one relationship, it affects all of them. It floods your life and your connections. Like water, it finds any place that it can penetrate and infiltrate.

One of the absolute best ways I’ve found to pursue possibility is through the question "What if?". This question moves you from the realm of certainty that something can’t be, to the possibility of "What If It Could Be?”

Writers do this all the time. What if there was a world in another dimension, and we could travel there? What if animals could talk to us? What if some people were born with superhuman powers? "What if?" is the gateway to imagination. When we can imagine a love that’s better than it’s ever been, when we can see and appreciate the possibility in the people we are connected to, the world opens up to us and relationships become easier, lighter, full of adventure, and fun.

Not every “What If?” question is helpful. This is not an open door to project all your fears and worries onto other people by imagining all the things that could go wrong. This is about looking at what you really want and then saying “What if it could be?”.

Possibility in family

Finding possibility in family relationships can be difficult. The very nature of moving through your life in connection with other human beings, leads to the loss of possibility. Have you ever noticed yourself reverting back to acting like a teenager at family functions or treating your adult child as if they were still an actual child?

As we grow and change in family relationships, we often find ourselves overlooking possibility. When you’ve known your child to hate peas, but as an adult at Thanksgiving, here they are eating peas. You think to yourself (and maybe say out loud) “You hate peas!” 

We’ve all seen it play out in movies. 

“I don’t!” responds the adult son with obvious disdain towards his mother. 

“Yes, you do. You’ve always hated them.” 

And both parties retreat into the loss of possibility.

A conversation later shows the adult son complaining to his girlfriend. “I hated peas when I was seven. Why does she treat me like a child?”

Mom, in this scenario, holds on to the old version of her son. It’s not because she wants him to remain a child or wants to treat him that way, it’s because she came to the end of who he is and isn’t allowing for the possibility of change. 

Possibility can be painful. There can be loss involved. In order to step into a full relationship with her adult son, a mom will have to give up the child that she knew before. Some of us don’t want to do that. The truth is, though, that the child isn’t there anymore and the relationship she is holding on to will never go back to what it was. When we look towards possibility, when we allow ourselves to see beyond what we already know about someone, we get to create a new relationship. We get to allow people, even family, to change and to grow. We get to step into a brand new relationship with the same old people.

This doesn’t just happen in family relationships. People end relationships all the time because they believe they've reached the end of possibility. And that’s okay. While it’s true that every person has possibility, it’s also true that every person has freedom.

You can't reach the end of a human being. But you also get to choose if you want to pursue possibility, if you want to keep going, or if you want to give up. You get to weigh the costs and the benefits and determine if it's worth it. Regardless of what anyone else says, only you can do that in your relationships.

Sometimes letting a relationship end or purposefully ending it, is the path you choose to take. There’s no formula, no requirements, no expectations. You get to choose what you want and how you want it. And so does the other person. 

Always.

In order to find the possibility in a person, you have to let go of who you thought that person was. Sometimes that means letting go of the relationship you want in order to allow the possibility in that person to show up. You get to let go of the need to control and contain that person, and yourself, in all of this. Because the truth is, once you allow the rush of possibility in, it will disrupt your life. Control is no longer an option. Possibility will create new opportunity; sometimes opportunity isn't what we expect it to be.

Maybe that sounds like a lot and maybe you’re not sure if you want to go there. That’s okay. You can seal up the cracks and not let possibility in if that's what you want to do. It's not an easy path and it's not the path for everyone.

But if the question "What If?" haunts you at night. If you, at your very soul, believe love could be different and long for that to be true, ask yourself: "What if it could be?" and see where the water of possibility takes you.