What if?

We've all asked ourselves that question (or something similar) at one time or another. What if I'd gotten that job/promotion/lucky break? If only I had/hadn't done/said this or that. How might my life have turned out differently? It's not always a question of regret, though. Sometimes it can be the opposite - an opportunity to appreciate how good we have it when we realize how easily things could have gone wrong. Perhaps you narrowly escaped what would have been a deadly accident, or you were saved from going down the wrong path by someone who cared enough to set you straight.

I've always been intrigued by the "what ifs," especially as it relates to finding a mate. There are any number of things that could prevent two specific people from meeting and having a chance to fall in love, and just as many variables that must line up exactly right in order that they will. For example, my husband and I met in high school. But, if his parents had bought house "A" instead of house "B" when he was a kid, the two of us could have ended up in different towns. In that case, would destiny have seen to it that we found each other anyway, or would we each be happily (or unhappily) married to somebody else today?

These kinds of questions are at the very core of the book I'm currently writing and even appear in the two I've already completed. In For Myself Alone the heroine expresses this thought in the final chapter: "I marvel when I think that this auspicious outcome hinged on the unlikeliest string of circumstances ... Indeed, had events not unfolded exactly as they have, my lot might have been quite different." She's in a count-your-blessings frame of mind. Taking a more negative view is Mr. Wickham in The Darcys of Pemberley: "Had it not been for a cruel accident of birth, I should have been the master of Pemberley instead of a lowly tenant." Elizabeth wisely counters with: "By the same logic, Mr. Wickham, you or I could just as easily have been born beggars. Speculation of that sort is pointless." Pointless perhaps, but it makes for an interesting discussion or story line.