What Could Have Happened?
In his book, The Black Swan, the Lebanese descendant, essayist, and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote that we tend to overestimate what happened and ignore what could have happened. Let’s dive into the explanation of this subject by painting it into real life and everyday events.
Everybody has their own magnificent stories or extremely saddest stories about their lives. Most people believe that what they’ve been through is unimaginable, and no one has done what they’ve done or been through what they’ve been through and that they are very strong because they came out alive, they convince themselves.
Look, I get it. We all have our own worst shitty events that occurred in our lives in the sense that, in some cases, they make us feel entitled about ourselves. Feeling entitled is the real worst shit we can adopt to ourselves, I state. On certain occasions, we tend to convince ourselves that no one--not even a cat, a superhero, or Christ--can survive what we survived. Or no one can excel in and achieve what we have accomplished. We also like to soothe ourselves with our own good sounding lies.
Take, for instance, someone like me who has no goddamn clue what is like to be raised by your biological father and growing up with a furious stepfather and an emotionally cold, distant, unopen mother, so I would say that it affects me in most areas of relationships with people around me, specifically with those--I tried and still trying--to form an intimate relationship with them.
In that case, I would lash out and say no one knows the pain I know of growing up as a boy without a biological father and living with a rageful stepfather and a cold, distant mother who displayed ambiguous feelings towards me. On certain occasions, I felt like she hated me. Other times, I felt like she was scared of me. But typically I felt like she didn't give a fuck about me and my existence. All that shit made me feel like I wasn't enough or wasn't pleasing her enough. It's like I was an invisible human figure in her eyes. It's like was some sort of a shadow plastered in walls.
You see? I would say no one--absolutely no one--in this planet earth filled with eight billion people, knows what I'm talking about. No one can understand the pain I felt. Nothing and no one can help me heal the traumas that are haunting me on a daily basis, rioting in my mind and seeking my tender attention. I'm not like everyone else. I'm beyond uniqueness. Some people are lucky and I'm unlucky, I might believe that.
As good as this may sound, but this is total, pure, one hundred percent BULLSHIT! Yea, it happened. It is hurting me now when I reflect on this shit because it happened and it had to, so what? Does that mean I'm unlucky? Does that set me apart from the rest of the human race in all countries and all tribes and make me a unique saint chosen by God? Does that mean no one will ever understand my pain? Does that mean nothing or no one can help me heal from these childhood wounds? Really? Fuck no! My traumas are not rare nor are they refined from gold.
My traumas are my traumas and I may have tended to overestimate them with the assumption that they're incomparable to anyone else's in the universe. I may have believed I was the only one suffering in this kind of deep, absurd shit of experiencing lack of enough parent's love, closure, comfort, and openness. But that's total bullshit, so to speak.
Listen, I'm not trying deflect or runaway from the pain of acknowledging and confront my shit, I consistently address them and sometimes test myself if I'm capable enough to confront them and--when I do get some extra balls--I go head on with them, man-to-man. Like thunder and rock.
Lower your head a bit closer to mine to receive this fucking freeing truth. This truth is invaluable more than the amount of cash you can stack up in your room or vault. More than the number of girls you sleep with every weekend. More than the attention you get from your Facebook and Instagram followers. More than the metrics you use to measure your self-worth. And more than your medals, certificates, praises, credentials or positions in your job.
What's that truth? Truth is: you overestimate what happened and underestimate what could have happened. Yes, let me rephrase this sentence for you: you exaggerate what happened and ignore what could have taken place. How? you ask. That's a nutritional question, baby.
You are sitting there, bragging about how you managed to survive a certain situation and escaped death (say, how you were stabbed and shot) or trying to get us pray and cry with you for your unfortunate life that is kicking your ass around the clock to the point that you regard yourself as a worthless piece of shit.
Any suitable hypothesis I can use to clarify my statement? Oh, I've got an idea, I'm gonna use the first one that popped in my head.
Suppose you were almost aborted twice and you're the first-born to your mom and dad. You find out about this a week ago that your mom and dad didn't plan and didn't want to have a child due to particular circumstances during those times when they first formed a relationship as a young couple. This shit starts bothering you as you are now analyzing the way they used to treat you as a kid--particularly the bad way. You are now beginning to see uncomfortable patterns of their behavior and attitude towards you. You begin to resent them for the first time in your life after more than 2 or 3 decades of surviving two abortions.
Immediately, you start spending your afternoons and nights in bars and clubs to help yourself fight the pain that your mom almost flushed you on the toilet. You imagine the pain of flowing in the sewer pipes straight to the sewage base or whatever it is when you were innocent and zero. That pain hurts you like ancient Chinese swords slowly slicing your butt like a cake.
You sob, saying your mom and dad wanted you dead when you were zero, and that’s why they were always treating you like a stray dog. You try and succeed in finding links with your newly formed narratives. Sure, without a doubt, you now hate them. You remember the time when you were 4 years old your mom refused to buy you brand new sneakers for Christmas Eve and Batman’s underwear. You also link your narratives with the way your dad used to beat the crap out of you. You see yourself as pure garbage to them because they didn’t love you. You recall all the punishments you received and hurtful words they said to you throughout your entire childhood. You are deeply wounded, right?
After feeling like garbage, you decide that your painful experiences cannot be compared to any painful things in the universe. You begin to see why you have so much anger issues. You consider yourself as unloved and unwanted. Somehow you find yourself contemplating suicide whenever you feel hopeless. That sucks, isn't it?
Surviving two abortions and then raised by a hateful mom and unreliable dad is sorrowful and cannot be taken so lightly because it happened to you. And your struggle is hugely unmatched. You want your pain to be respected and taken seriously when you talk about it to people because, you know, your parents wanted your ass gone through the sewer pipe.
This kind of story sucks. It's one of those stories that makes one remind oneself that everyone go through shit in life, no matter the kind of car they drive or the religion they choose to follow or how cool their tone of voice is or how sexy their body structures are. Everyone go through shit. No exception.
You may think that what happened to you as a kid growing up under such fucky conditions was/is the worst thing ever occurred to you, but what if I told you that you were lucky that what could've happened didn't happen. Exactly, you were very much lucky that what could've happen didn't happen.
What if I told you that if your parents decided to change their minds about you after you were born would be the most worst shit ever happened to you. What if they decided to push you off the cliff and die or abandon you in a foreign, tyrannical country so you won't find them again. Wouldn't that be the worst shit occured to you? I guess you'd be going around formulating a different narrative there. Or occupying a space underneath the ground with the tombstone above you.
You should be thankful that you're still alive but you shouldn't make a mistake of exaggerating your survival narratives or accomplishments. What could've happened would be much worse than that. Or better. Who knows?
Take another example, suppose your best friend or the breadwinner from your family died tragically in a car crash. That will cause emotional--and probably psychological--devastation to you. It will require you to adapt painfully with grief. It will require you to accept death and pain. Obviously, it sucks. It's undoubtedly painful.
This death then removes a fog from your brain and you start zooming in and caring only about what's more important in life. You work so hard for those things because your friend's or breadwinner's death reminded you that life is short and must be lived fully and that anything can happen.
Let's say you then accomplish and get things you've been afraid but wanting to--like buying a house, a car, pursuing your music career, starting a business, getting married, traveling abroad, improving yourself, retreating from arguing with strangers on internet, or asking that girl out. You feel proud about yourself. You earn some respect from the world. And somehow be considered a hero.
Let’s look at the backside of all this: what could’ve happened and what you ignore could’ve happened.
Suppose your best friend or breadwinner from your home didn’t die. They’re very much alive, fit and healthy as fuck. You’re still in that same spot, that same person with that same mentality in that same environment with those same fucking friends. You wouldn’t feel the urge and the drive to do all these things you’re afraid to. And most likely, you wouldn’t accomplish anything because you would still be comfortable and feel safe with where you are and what you are. You would still be arguing with strangers on the internet and afraid of asking that girl out. And no one would’ve considered you a hero.
As I've stated, you should be thankful for what happened but don't ever try to overestimate it. Ignoring what could've happened is a huge mistake. When your best friend dies, sure, you must be in pain, cry, curse, drink, smoke, punch the walls, smash the furniture with a baseball bat, write songs, become a poet, commit to a certain religion, accept, grieve, and outgrow the suffering and pain. Is there anything better you can do other than doing so? I'm not saying you must drink and smoke and destroy furniture but that's part of the healing process. We all heal differently from pain. We all must do.
"If my friend didn’t die, I would be happy, and we would still hang out together," you say. That’s a very noble point. No one wants their best friend dead yet. But as humans functioning under the authority of nature, we must accept what nature does to us, strive for survival, and be glad that what could’ve happened didn’t happen.
Let’s be realistic. Someone might cry out and say, "No, my friend didn’t deserve to die." I would gently ask,"Why?" And they they’d respond with frustration, "BECAUSE HE’S MY FRIEND!"
Hey! Wake the fuck up! Nature eliminates those who are weak and unsuitable to be around. The way nature works should not be scorned or questioned. Nature has no favorites and doesn’t kill by mistake. It has no schedules and takes action at any time. It has no vacations. It doesn’t forget. It doesn’t care who your best friend is or how gorgeous and honorable you are. A heart’s failure signals weakness in Nature’s eyes, and the subject should be eliminated. A cancer, an extremely cold weather, a bomb explosion, and a tragic car crash that caused fatal damage also signals weakness towards nature.
Therefore, it’s time to stop overestimating what happened and neglect what could’ve happened. For the fact you’re here with us on the planet as a living human being roaming around searching for your purpose or pursuing a career, you’re lucky because what could’ve happened would be something else. Even if you feel like garbage, lost your eye, starving in a street, lost your job, raised by a step-parent, survived two abortions, or divorced. That is reasonable. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here reading this, and perhaps something else could’ve happened to you. Or to your best friend.
