What If?
BY WIEBKE SCHUSTER
What if – If then – That means – So I must
Welcome to my mind.
Ever since I can remember, I have used this thought pattern to make decisions. Hundreds of times daily.
It all started off sitting on the ledge of my windowsill overlooking the empty acres of land behind our house in Cuxhaven, Germany.
Then, there was only: “What If…”
I learned to practice my imagination and never stopped. I chased a job where imagination was a key skill: dance.
I went on a journey that took me from Cuxhaven to Seattle, from Seattle to London, from London to New York and from New York to Munich…
What if – I don’t arrive at the studio before everyone else – 8 am, no later, class starts at 9:00.
If I arrive later – then I won’t have enough time to go through all of my exercises before class starts.
That means – I won’t compare well with the other dancers in class. I might as well try to blend in with the sterile white walls, or be the anonymous ghost I feel like I am when I wander this metropolis to fill the bit of spare time I have.
So – I – must – get off this bus stuck in traffic and walk – walk through Greenwich town center with my earbuds in to help filter out all the distracting city noise. Push past people to get ahead, move.
Because passive, waiting, motion-less is way too dangerous a state to be in for me.
But?
What if in these past eight years, I had allowed myself to pause for a moment.
Would I have seen what I see now, now that I have arrived here, in Los Angeles, at a place where being in motion is no longer all consuming, no longer a reason for being.
If I had allowed myself to connect with the world outside my obsessive pursuit
Would I be standing here, now, at 28, telling you that I never told someone, ‘I love you’.
It’s just three words. It is not the end of the world should they get swallowed up by someone else’s void.
