Ever wondered how things would have panned out if you had taken the ‘road less travelled’ or some such time-travel concept; one that keeps prodding you, making you lie awake in the night, pondering the ifs of life?

A tinge of regret, a whole lot of sighs and a deadpan wall that reveals nothing – such is the fate that stirs the mote of ‘what-if’ nothingness. 

What if you’d taken that course in college? 

What if your bike hadn’t broken that day?

What if you had taken a second opinion before agreeing for the surgery?

What if you had decided not to quit that job before finding another?

What if you’d waited for your turn instead of rushing ahead at the bus stop that led to a fisticuff?

What if, on that decisive day, you had chosen to take the fork in the road and not assuage your self-doubt with the belief that ‘if Robert Frost could do it and write about it another day, I too can’?

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What Robert Frost wrote, albeit in a non-philosophical mien, was this: ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the road less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.’ 

He was not plagued by ‘what if’ doubts; it was a perfunctory note to a friend, or so the online world concludes.

But on a personal note, aren’t these ‘what if’ doubts the very ones that drive some of us to seek resolutions from astrologers and other sources? It is an act to seek redemption from the choices and the doubts they foster – those ‘should I do it’, ‘will it work’ doubts that yearn to be hushed by someone who claims to have divine or astrological powers.

Now, imagine if there really was an app to revisit those ‘what if’ doubts – an app that demonstrated all the permutations and combinations for every ‘this’ or ‘that’ question. Wouldn’t life then be a smooth sail in the waters?

Let’s hypothetically assume someone is delving into the intricacies of the coding business, to incorporate the myriad choices this world has to offer into the app – ensuring every option is both relatable and quantifiable to align with the choices ahead of us. Wouldn’t that be swell?

Consider this scenario, you have just completed your 12^th grade and are pondering if you should stick to science as planned or shift over to humanities. What if this futuristic app told you exactly how things would progress based on your choice? If this time travel app could tell you where you would be in the scheme of things in the next five years?

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App or otherwise, it is easy to indulge in this pastime. Personally, my constant refrain was this: 20 years from now, will I be regretting or laughing over this? 

The phrase ’20 years from now’ is used euphemistically to refer to a future time period that seemed plausible in the prime of youth – not now; with time and age it has dwindled to a year or two at the most.

But then again, what if this yet-to-be-coded ‘what-if’ app left nothing to decode, robbed all elements of surprise that unshackle this mundane life?

Would you still want it?