the feeling of an alternate reality .. of a what if? is often imagined to be as some other reality, where everything is the same, where you are you, but not quite the same. at some point in time, instead of going right, you turned left – instead of doing this, you did that. it can be based on a miniscule difference, like taking a left instead of a right turn on your way to the grocery .. or a more monumental decision, like the decision to go to this university, moving to this place ..

but how can we tell when one decision is miniscule or monumental? we only evaluate after the fact, but the evaluation is handicapped: we only know how one reality looks like, we can only speculate about the other. what if i was still with that girlfriend and we never broke up? what if i never pursued graduate studies but started working instead?

is there a point in thinking about what would have happened, murmuring to yourself, taking a small pause – imagining how it would have been? after all, it is never going to happen because it is past. you are here and now is now. but still, would things have been different?

rare occasions sometimes present themselves, when splintered paths of the past – that one girlfriend you broke up with but never knew quite why – meander their way back and somehow cross our life again, however briefly. what do you do at such a moment, a moment where the stars in the sky seem aligned just for you two? but the light the stars radiate somehow lost some of their brightness .. dimmer? or just not quite the same..

you smile all the same, when you see her.

‘no way, i cannot believe i am seeing you here!’

‘how have you been?’ ‘your hair is so long!’

‘and your hair so short!’.

for a moment, you don’t quite know what to say. an image from your past, right in front of you – struck as if by lightning. but you think to yourself .. ‘her smile is still the same ..’

a lot of things change, but some remain. isn’t that all what matters in the end? this, is not a rhetorical question.