So, WHAT If?

I find myself lost in the wealth of knowledge that clouds my reality. My vision blurs around the imagery of what I think I can grasp. My body bleeds red. I know why it bleeds red. Even as the blood drips from my fingertips to the pavement I ask, what could it mean? As if the wound weren’t answer enough. What if it was a different way? There is an answer. What if it wasn’t? An answer exists here too. What happens when both answers can be equally weighed? What happens when the two parts conflict? I feel myself breaking in two. Sometimes in threes. Which answer is me? I can hardly hear her over the cacophony. Will it be this way forever? I know the answer. Silence.

Life is full of symbols. Nuances exist in all art forms, whether it be written word, song, visual art. I struggle to find the distinction between reality and symbols. When is a cigar just a cigar? I keep looking for answers, but find myself with more questions. The closer I get to my goal the further away I get to the destination. I notice people around me wishing for things. I wish for things too. Wishing things were different. What if they were a different way? As we wish we find answers within what we wished for. Sometimes we wish too big and don’t imagine the repercussions. Be careful what you wish for…

I was very high yesterday and watched Italian filmmaker, Helmut Desantos’, “Gods of Mexico”. Described not as a film, or documentary, but as a “startlingly inventive ethnographic meditation on indigenous communities in Mexico”, which inspired this entire conclusive idea. I witnessed the way the miners (salt miners) strapped kilos of salt to the backs of donkeys and hiked miles up mountains just to load those bags onto another truck which would ship the salt away to local communities. I saw zen masters. I witnessed the history which was depicted in the uniformity of their movement. These men carried tradition upon their backs with every stone they threw into the flame to create lime. The craft of creating salt. The beauty. The precision. I thought: These men are rich even if they are not paid much.

I have been observing my proclivity to use the word '“if”. It serves as an internal tool to edit myself against a consequence I do not wish to receive. Now, the abundance is that of knowledge. I feel as though I know so much about mindfulness and the ability to empathize and counter argue and the other point of view and being in someone’s smelly shoes…I don’t know how to stop?

I sometimes do not know when to stop asking “if”—never satisfied with what I have chosen for myself because who we are is endless. I have no idea what the end of me looks like. It’s not like the end of a ribbon reem, or a book. It’s more of one of those fantasy books where you write anything and it comes true…So far…so good.

But what about the “What If"?”

Sometimes, we are richer than money can provide. We are richer than we think.

When I was a teenager, I spent several months in Honduras over a few different visits. It’s one of the poorest countries in Latin America, politically unstable and economically strained. But at the time, I didn’t think much about that. I didn’t grow up wealthy either—not even close—but I never felt the difference. My family was resourceful. We made it work. I was warm, fed, clothed, and, in many ways, happy. My mom always reminded me to pay attention to what I had, to be grateful—even if what I had wasn’t much—because, as she said, some people had less.

Then we went to Honduras.

And I realized... it wasn’t really less. At least not in the way I expected. As a teenager, I was naive. I laugh now thinking back on it. I went there bracing myself for lack, expecting to feel pity, or guilt, or maybe even superiority. But I didn’t. People laughed, they danced, they shared meals. No one seemed to feel poor. And that sparked something in me: If you never know you're poor, how can you miss what you've never had?

That question stuck with me.

Years later, I came across Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice (which I will go further into depth about later), and suddenly, it all clicked. He explains that more choice—more options, more access, more imagined possibility—doesn’t always free us. It often traps us. It raises our expectations, makes us second-guess our decisions, and feeds regret. We confuse abundance with satisfaction. We think more will make us happier, but it often just makes us more anxious. It was like he articulated something I had always felt but never knew how to say.

Because what I saw in Honduras wasn’t poverty—it was presence. Families living together across generations, food grown close to home, routines shaped by nature, not algorithms. They weren’t confused by seventeen fucking kinds of apples in the grocery store. They didn’t need to be. At 6 a.m., when the communities water tank finally refilled, it was time to shower, eat breakfast, and start the day. Frijoles, quesillo, crema, huevos, tortillas hechas a mano, un cafecito. Not a lot of variety from day to day, but never lacking.

There, I observed a kind of wealth that didn’t demand to be seen. A wealth in slowness, in laughter, in knowing your neighbor. In getting to experience the Earth at its hum—not its hustle. And I realized that while I came from what some would call "less," I too had always been surrounded by a quiet kind of richness.

Schwartz’s insight tied everything together for me: the idea that in chasing the best, we often miss what’s already enough. That maybe we’re not suffering from lack, but from the illusion that we could always have something better…

In his TED Talk, The Paradox of Choice, Shwartz argues that our obsession with maximizing every outcome—choosing the “best” career, the “perfect” partner, the “most ideal” life—can actually make us less satisfied. We drown in possibility, questioning every decision, asking ourselves what if we’d chosen differently. He introduces the idea of “satisficing”—a mindset that embraces good enough, not as a form of settling, but as a kind of wisdom. That simple shift in thinking hit me in the gut. It was like he’d put language to a lesson my mother taught me when I was too young to recognize it as philosophy: appreciate what you have, even when all you have is nothing.

And that’s where my mother comes in.

As a child, I never knew I was poor. That’s not because I didn’t have less, but because my mom gave me more than I ever thought to ask for. Looking back, I see now how hard she worked to craft a world where magic was made from scraps—how she gave form to dreams without ever calling them that. She was always dreaming, always building. A grapevine gazebo one year, garden planter beds the next. She turned ideas into action in her own time, like a quiet architect sketching a better life into existence.

My mother never claimed to be an artist, but she was. Still is. She created my childhood like it was a canvas—filled it with beaches, parks, tide pools, baseball games, museums, and moments I didn't realize were stitched together on a shoestring. I never saw limits; I only saw the life she made feel full. We were broke. I just didn’t know it.

And here’s the part that gets me—she did all of this while growing up alongside me. She had me at seventeen. Her life lessons became mine. And maybe that's why I feel her magic so deeply: it wasn't separate from my own—it was my own. My mom was a mother, a homemaker, a dental assistant, a nanny, a co-founder, and now a CFO. She stumbled, yes, but she never fell. She kept going. Kept dreaming. Kept getting better.

I remember when she worked as a nanny in Hillsborough. Those were my favorite days. I got to witness the other side of life—the side with full pantries and massive houses and snacks we didn’t have at home. I remember sneaking extra granola bars, fascinated by the abundance. The families had names I won’t share, but in my head they were the “Edinbouroughs,” “Kurts,” “Templetoonies.” Their homes felt like palaces. I could have felt small, but I didn’t. My world never felt lacking, only different.

And still—now, as an adult, I catch myself in that familiar loop of wondering what if. What if I had grown up with those snacks, those houses, those privileges? I look at my younger siblings and sometimes compare our childhoods. They have more now—more structure, more stability, more material things. And I love that for them. I really do. It shows me how far my mom has come. But it also reveals to me what I never had. Or, more precisely, what I never knew I didn’t have. That’s the paradox. Schwartz nailed it: more choices don’t always mean more joy. Sometimes, they just open the door to regret.

But then I look at my mom again. She is the best version of herself I’ve ever seen. And in every season, she has grown. She has risen. She has done the impossible—turned a shit hand into a warm meal and a lit kitchen table. My mom taught me that a life of “enough” can be richer than a life of “everything.” That satisfaction doesn’t come from maximizing—it comes from meaning.

So now, when I find myself spiraling into those “what if” thoughts—wondering how life might’ve been if only we’d had more—I try to pause. I think of that little girl on the beach, arms stretched wide like she could hold back the tide. I remember that I never felt poor until someone else gave me the language for it.

Schwartz helped me put words to what I lived. But it was my mom who taught me the truth: Enough is a kind of magic. And she made it real.

You are enough even if who you are does not align with the “if” you made up in your mind.