What If

What do you normally think right after those two words?

I tend to think: what if… catastrophe.

My propensity to imagine the worst is so deeply ingrained that even after proving to myself, again and again, that the worst case never actually happens, catastrophe is still my automatic first thought whenever something even slightly unusual happens in my life.

I get a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency? Oh no, I’m being audited; I’m going to owe thousands of dollars. It was a certificate thanking me for volunteering to help low-income seniors file their taxes.

My co-parent asks to talk about our parenting schedule? Oh no, he’s going to upend everything we’ve worked hard to build, and my life is about to fall apart as I adjust to some new arrangement. He wanted to swap Sundays because he had an event to go to.

My kid’s teacher wants to schedule a talk? Oh no, my child is a bully. She wanted to ask if I’d come speak to her class about financial literacy.

I first noticed this pattern in the middle of my divorce, imagining every possible horror my post-divorce life might hold. A friend finally said, “Renée, things never turn out the way you imagine. Have you ever once been able to predict the future?”

I scoffed at her. What did she know? She wasn’t in the middle of the horror show I was living. But her words lodged themselves somewhere in my brain anyway, whether because I wanted to prove her wrong or because my analytical brain genuinely wanted to test the theory, I’m still not sure.

So I tested it. And things didn’t turn out anything like I’d imagined. What surprised me more was that they never turned out nearly as bad as I’d feared.

I started paying closer attention: to the dire thought right after “what if,” and then to what actually happened afterward. Every time, the gap between the two was enormous. Turns out I really can’t predict the future. Damn it.

I also noticed how much those dire thoughts cost me. Hours spent worrying about outcomes that never arrived. Once I saw that clearly, I was pretty annoyed with myself. What a colossal waste of time.

Then I noticed something else. I’m not the only one who does this. Almost everyone I know does it. Everyone.

And if you’re in an especially stressful stretch, separating from a spouse, negotiating an agreement, your worst-case machinery runs into overdrive. I get it. I lived it too.

So take it from me, and from the friend who called this out in me first.

It will never be what you imagine. It will probably be considerably better.

And one more thing worth knowing: whatever the future actually turns out to be, you’ll be able to handle it.