Ain't No World But This World

by: Michael Upston, LCSW

In philosophy there is the idea of possible worlds. Possible worlds are situations that could have happened, but did not. For example, my family and I could have gone to the beach this weekend, but instead we stayed home and did things around our immediate neighborhood.  The point being, had we decided to go to the beach instead of staying at home the trajectory of our lives would have turned out entirely differently. This idea was captured in the 1990s film Sliding Doors.  The movie involves two separate plot lines - one where a woman catches the train and another where the woman misses the train. Her life turns out very differently depending on whether or not she catches the train. This seemingly minor detail ends up sending her life in completely different directions. In reality, there are many different possible worlds, but only one actual world. In one’s life, there are many ways things could have turned out, but only one way things actually did turn out.

This idea has a significance that goes beyond mere philosophical speculation or interesting story telling. If we think about it, whenever we feel regret we are thinking about possible worlds. I regret that things turned out in such and such a way, meaning I wish that a different sequence of events had happened than the sequence of events that actually did happen. When we engage in this type of thinking we create a fantasy, a narrative in our minds, of what things would have been like had we made different choices. Had I decided to choose a different major in college, then my life would be better, or had I pursued a certain opportunity many years ago, then I would be happy, etc. In other words, we tell ourselves a story about how things would have been had we made different choices.  

I suspect humans have done this as long as there have been humans, but here's the rub - we have no idea how things would have been had we made different choices. All we can really know is how things are, how things actually turned out. These stories we tell ourselves of the “would have, could have, should haves,” tell us nothing about how things actually would have been had we only done this or that thing.  

However, what these thoughts do tell us a lot about is how we feel about this world, the only world there is, and this is where they are helpful. They help us to get a sense of what we feel is missing in our lives, and this gives us the opportunity to explore what we can do to feel differently.  They teach us what we need to accept and what we need to change. The realities of this world at times can be a hard pill to swallow. But the reality is, this is the only world there is, and it is only through trying to deal effectively with the world as it is, that we can build a meaningful place for ourselves within it.