Imagine What If

What if I wasn’t me?

Imagine if I could choose who I want to be.

What if I could wish to be someone else, and then one day wake up and be them?

Imagine if I discovered my gentle nature and could exist without letting anger take over any aspect of my mind and life.

What if I could erase my memories, keeping only the ones I felt were good?

Imagine if I found a way to do meticulous tasks throughout my daily life, where cooking, cleaning, gardening, watching plants grow, drawing, and breathing were a life-long meditative process.

What if I could erase perhaps the most potent one: being 5 years old and standing in between my parents as they screamed at each other. Tears in my eyes, not understanding why people just had to yell and fight to resolve something only to leave it unresolved. What if I could erase this memory, the memory of the beginning of a varied and complex home life?

Imagine if I could find creative ways to spend my money, on things like education, picking up hobbies, sharing food with friends, and giving what I don’t need.

What if I could take back the things I’ve done? The hopping on planes and boats with no clue what I’d do when I arrived, but going anyway?

Imagine if I never stopped dreaming, that the internal conversations I have are forever being held in order to make myself a better person, always contemplative.

What if I had never decided to apply to go to Japan the first time? Would I still be in El Paso, would I have killed myself, would I have been okay with being gay, would I be a slob, or would I have checked myself in to the insane asylum?

Imagine if I had stayed in the rut I was in, let the emotions and opinions of others drift me away from who I want to be.

What if I hadn’t had to carry anger when I was young? What if I never knew the frustration of what it is like to be young and not know where you’ll be living in a year and always yearning to be at your grandma’s house because it was the only home you ever knew? What if I hadn’t learned so young what black hate feels and looks like, because I had little control over my environment?

Imagine if I had found peace with myself, loved all the beauty of my imperfection, my flaws being what indeed makes me perfect, makes me a person. Smiling and feeling accomplished when I think of the person that I am.

What if I had not fallen in love multiple times, sometimes with many people all within a few months? Would I have learned that my desire to love in the past came from a desire to love myself, someone I was not willing to face until very recently?

Imagine if my love for learning was no longer separated into different realms in my life, but curiosity and wonder for life became the biggest aspect of my existence.

What if I had never explored my mind? What if I had not done that meditation retreat for 10 days in silence? What if I had not allowed myself to become a socially functional lunatic where the thoughts in my mind were never the actions I was displaying? What if I hadn’t needed to learn how to hide my thoughts from an early age so that I could succeed in ways others saw fit?

Imagine if I had never looked at the smallest machines, plants, flowers, or children and been awed by the complexity of intricate organizations that make everything tick. Applying my studies of organizational culture in public policy to the ideas of atoms and biology.

What if my siblings had never been born? Would I have known repeatedly what it is to hold a newborn in your hands, to appreciate life, and to love even the most helpless of creatures? Would my heart have grown to its immense and wonderful proportions had it not been for these wonderful gifts in my life?

Imagine if I wrote my dreams down night after night and realized that to be at peace, it is a life-long maintenance program.

What if I had never made shit decisions and huge fuck ups? What if I had not made decisions knowing full well that it would damage a relationship, but doing it anyway because I knew I had to leave?

Imagine if I bought little tree saplings and watched them day by day as they grew into more beautiful breathing creatures.

What if I had never learned what scathing anger was, anger so potent you want to punch walls and hurl things off buildings? Anger that embedded itself so deeply over the years that the more I bottled it up, the more vengeful it was when it finally would come out.

Imagine if I learned my patience from the plants, how people concepts of time and plant world concepts of time can differ dramatically. How just like a plant, I know that the best fruit comes from years of nurturing, belief, patience, and lots of love.

What if I had never learned how to swim? What if I had never realized that being under water makes me feel so free, so alive, so happy, so calm, and like nothing can hurt me? Water was one of the hugest comforts I had as a child.

Imagine I could use music to calm me, to keep me sane, to inspire, to dream, and to develop myself internally, letting the sounds and beats flow into me, like water feeds plants. Music needing to be clean, peaceful, positive message oriented, and lyrics that make me smile while thinking deeply.

What if my initial travels abroad hadn’t stemmed from a need to run away, to escape the drama of my family and friends, to want to expand my mind, to know full well that the life they participated in was not the world, was not my reality, was not who I wanted to be?

Imagine if I learned that I had a choice in what I think, that the only person who could ever truly control my thoughts is myself. Knowing myself enough to be able to walk away, to say no, and to press on in my life.

What if I had never met the people I’ve met, the fucking intelligent vagabonds, artists, everything in between? The people who have changed me not only with their words, but with their presence. What if I had never learned how to just sit and observe and then appreciate others for the simplicity within their complexity?

Imagine if I had discovered what love means to me. That love for myself is more important than any other love I can have for others, for through loving myself, I see myself in everything, and thus my capacity to love increases.

What if I had never sipped alcohol? Letting the pain and anger of seeing and being a part of alcohol abuse while younger get the best of me rather than see alcohol as a way to bond, a way to relax, and a wonderful ode to the simple science of survival.

Imagine if I was confident in who I am physically, my male self. Being a gentle male who is able to nurture new borns, where aggression is not a characteristic I like nor want to possess, there is more love in tenderness than in force.

What if I had not gone insane, again, again, and again, to the point now where I know myself well enough and know what sets me off and never treading that path again? What if I had not spent years contemplating myself, if I had just said fuck it, but never knew where my thoughts and actions had stemmed from?

Imagine if I went to sleep in a room full of trees I grew myself. That the trees helped clean my air while I helped feed them, and in return, my sleeping brain can process dreams better and there are no more nightmares.

What if I had never pulled myself up time after time, that no matter how shattered everything around me seemed, I’ve always been able to keep living? I’m a million times luckier than most people on this planet, I have food, shelter, and money. That enough makes me an aristocrat by many standards.

Imagine that I discovered how important food is to me. That there are no slapdash meals that I make, and every seed, spice, and minute detail is important to the process of cooking for me, the meditation of nourishment.

What if I had never picked up a pencil and started drawing? What if I had never done this to help me realize how important nature is to me, and how through art I can calm my thoughts, how using my hands grows my brain and increases my patience?

Imagine I had big dreams and that they changed year by year. That the constant that has stayed in all of these dreams throughout the years is my love of nature and my adoration for living things. That when I think of atoms, I think of minute particles and how they come together to create things as enormous as galaxies, as immense and complex as the entire universe.

What if I hadn’t started writing down my dreams? What if I had never realized that the only person I was struggling with was myself, and that through writing my dreams down I could get to a core that I could not see while awake? What if I had never realized that by doing this, I can consciously change my dreams by the fact that I deal with the emotions that get embedded deep in me without me knowing sometimes? What if I’ve learned to do this so that my dreams can consist of beautiful nature and friends and family and lots of love?

Imagine if I could imagine, that my day dreams consist of me thinking about becoming a beautiful animal that becomes a beautiful plant, that my brain uses all of the knowledge it has to create fanciful connections, dream up new possibilities, and create magnificent works of art, if only in the mind for a short moment of time.

What if I hadn’t spent years of my life looking at bugs and leaves, being amazed at the intricate biological workings of every cell, every atom, every particle all working together, all living?

Imagine if I no longer saw a disconnect between the humanities and sciences. That I could develop ways to inspire folks to learn things using all sorts of media, that learning was an interactive process and remembering things could be aided by individuals creating their own work.

What if I hadn’t learned that I really missed studying science, the way things work, and what we know about what we don’t know?

Imagine if I had learned that I am incredibly detail oriented, I like to create huge things then fill them with detail. An ode that every nook and cranny is beaming with some sort of life on this planet.

What if I could erase all my unpleasant memories and intensify the pleasant ones? Would I be nauseatingly euphoric all the time?

Imagine using my travels and experience to develop my character, that every moment in my life has been used to build me, to become more self-aware, and to teach me something about myself. The hardest of times were at best the greatest lessons I ever learned.

What if I had never learned how to love myself, to be myself always, and realize that the most important relationship in my life is the one I’ve developed with me?

Imagine that my greatest inspiration was me, that when I look back at all I’ve done and want to do, I can put myself in awe. Being my own head role model, constantly exploring myself and loving what I find.

What if I had finally learned to breathe?

Imagine what it feels like to just be.