This text was originally written in 2012, but left unpublished until 2024. Apart from the odd addendum the publication followed more-or-less as was, with the corresponding caveat that the text reflects/-ed my 2012 take, which might or might not (even absent an addendum) match my later take.
Since then, some further editing, the addition of some excursions, and maybe some odd other change followed. In this, I have not attempted to keep exact track of what contents originated when, although some portions might contain a reference to a particular year (especially, 2024).
Such modifications are so far normal—my texts are not intended to be static publish-once-and-leave-be-for-ever efforts. However, some confusion might ensue without this further disclaimer. (Chances are that I was short-sighted in my 2024 partial attempt to separate 2012 original and 2024 modifications, and that the best solution would be to rework the entire text to a “unified” and “history agnostic” version. That would be quite a bit of work that I can spend better elsewhere, however.)
As a note on terminology, I have grown uncertain whether “disco”, used repeatedly in the continuation, will typically be understood correctly in English, or whether some other term (e.g. “dance club”) might be preferable. For the sake of precision, however, I do have my mind on a big facility with loud music and dancing, and with no implication that the music at hand would match the big-in-the-1970s genre.
In life, there are many “What if?”s: What if I had done X instead of Y? What if event E had not taken place (or had another outcome)?
This page deals with some of my own experiences in this regard, originally starting just as musing around the “girl in the disco example” below.
In my case, some of the very largest include:
What if my parents had not divorced?
Likely consequences include my growing up in a better environment, with a wider set of external influences, and with less psychological issues. However, the impact through various ripple and side-effects could be far greater. For instance, the divorce led to both a career change (their employer, the Salvation Army, frowned upon divorces) and a relocation for both my parents. (In the case of my mother, as well as me and my sister, to the middle-of-nowhere three-thousand-inhabitants town where my maternal grandparents lived.)
Here and below the list of further speculations could be made very large; in particular, considering that any and all future events would be replaced by another set of events (although some broad tendencies and developments might end up very similar). I will not attempt to go into any deeper detail (at least not at this juncture; it might prove an interesting exercise at some future time). Obviously, in the end, any such speculation might be entirely off the mark. At an extreme, I might have died in a car accident five minutes into an alternate reality.
Coincidentally, I was considering this relocation from another angle, namely “What if Mother had not moved back to her childhood town?”, just a few months before my 2024 work. My main take at that time was happiness over having spent quite a few of my childhood years in such a near-nature environment. In particular, much time was spent in and around my grandparents’ house, which had a big lawn, trees, bushes, berries, home-grown potatoes, and whatnots—and was just a stone’s throw away from an actual forest. For a young child, this was a truly great physical environment.
(Of course, this is only one of the subsequent questions that followed from the divorce, and I would have preferred a whole family even in a big-city environment.)
What if I had remained in (or returned to) Sweden?
Obvious consequences include less money, better career chances (with easier communications and less cultural adjustment), and greater contact with my parents and other relatives. (The latter has shrunk continually since I moved to Germany. and is now quite small).
By 2024, several deaths, including my mother’s, have closed some windows entirely.
What if I had chosen an academic career?
This one is particularly hard to predict. While I had the brains for a career even in math (the most likely choice), I must admit certain doubts to my ability to adjust in a sufficiently timely manner (working methods, lack of humility, publication pressure) to reach the levels that I would have hoped for. At the same time, this type of work would likely have been more rewarding to me on a personal level.
Still, the one “What if?” that fascinates me, that always pops into my mind when I consider “What if?”s, is far more trivial:
During my early days in Germany, I and the other exchange students were given a preparatory course in German and German society by some native students. As one of several measures to integrate and entertain us, the “teachers” once took us to a disco. After some 20-to-30 minutes, I was sufficiently bored and annoyed at the loud music and crowded environment that I decided to leave. As I was nearing the exit, I felt my hands grabbed by a girl—and, being anxious to leave, I just extracted my hands and moved on without even looking at her. (My upper body being turned side-ways to pass through the crowd at the time, with my head still facing forwards.)
Herein lies one of the sources of my fascination: The spectrum of potential outcomes, had I acted differently, is enormous:
On one extreme, I might have looked down and been turned off; or she might only have wanted the one dance, after which our interaction would have ended.
On the other, she might have been a future long-term partner or even wife.
In the wide range between the extremes, we have scenarios like a short-term fling, a one-night stand, or just a pleasant evening.
Uncertainty and possibility exists on other planes too, e.g. whether she was someone my own age, an illegally present 14 y.o., or a delusional 30-something. An interesting question is whether she was a complete stranger or someone from within the group—something which could have had a considerably effect on the likelihoods of the above developments. Notably, with a bit of luck, someone within the group might already have had a crush on me.
The second reason for my fascination is that this was also the last time that I bothered with the integration activities, and from here on until I entered the work-force, I grew increasingly isolated, too a degree that I, with hindsight, must consider unhealthy—not to mention missing most of my last chances at a carefree student’s life. Even a brief fling might have kept this development in check; indeed, even a more positive impression of the evening might have had a non-trivial impact. Seeing that I was out the door ten or twenty seconds later, it could be argued that the pivotal point or the point of no return was that very moment of hand-holding.
Looking at the “wife extreme”, this would obviously have been life-changing on a level comparable to the other examples. However, seeing that I (writing in January 2012, shortly before turning 37) have never even been close to marrying, this is not a likely development. In contrast, the decision of whether to move to Germany or to remain in Sweden would definitely have had a major impact—and the incident in the disco has a trivial “expectation value” in comparison.
The width of the spectrum is of great importance: Just like everyone else, I have many other “What if?”s that deal with the opposite sex; however, none which fascinates me in the same way—even when the likelihood of considerable impact was objectively larger. (Including “What if I had been more responsive to that girl in college who appeared to be my groupie?” and “What if I had asked out that lovely French colleague who was on my mind for so long?”. Unlike most others, however, I find little room for “What if?”s in the relationships that did happen: That the current match was a poor one, without a long-term future, has usually been clear within days or weeks, and there has never been any single pivotal point where a “What if?” could have turned things in a different direction.)
However, a part of this fascination is of a representative character, the most prominent example within and the archetype of the group of romantic and sexual missed opportunities. (Which in my case likely is larger than for the average man.) Indeed, just like the proportion of text on this page dealing with the actual incident is comparatively small, so my own thoughts tend to circle around the event—not permanently land on it. Instead it is a red thread within and a catalyst for my thoughts.
I seem to recall describing this event from another perspective (likely, some variation of “I hate discos”) in a more recent text, but have not been able to find where on short notice.
This example is interesting in another regard: Sometimes, there are things that pop into my mind every now and then for years, and somehow seem important to me, but then disappear from my mind once I have written something about them. Here, I might have thought back on the “What if?” several times per year, on average, going from 1997 to 2012, but my thoughts since 2012 have (a) been much rarer, (b) turned towards “I hate discos”. Indeed, I have not visited a disco even once in the 27-ish years since the event. Had I written this text today, I would certainly have viewed either divorce or moving to Germany as “the big one”. The aforementioned “lovely French colleague” is another example—she was often on my mind until that text was written; afterwards, she just became someone from my past.
(Even in 2012, however and as noted, the status as “the big one” was a matter of my personal fascination—not of objective importance. What is fascinating and what is important are often very different things.)
For a better understanding of my views and actions, it might help to consider an analogy with potato chips and Brussels sprouts:
The one tastes well and is generally pleasant to eat, but is unhealthy.
The other is healthy, but has a deterring taste and provides an unpleasant eating experience.
Naturally, I would rather eat potato chips—but I might actually be better off with the Brussels sprouts.
Similarly, there are many things in the social area that I dislike and would rather not bother with (and many more that might be somewhat positive but fall well short of the fun to be had with my computer or a good book), but from which I might still benefit or have benefited when I was younger. This includes e.g. more partying and socializing.
A significant hitch with the analogy, obviously, is that potato chips grow problematic even in comparatively small doses whereas it takes an extreme dominance of solitude before it becomes a long-term problem. Similarly, the positive effects of, e.g., more partying underlie very rapid diminishing returns—and under no circumstances do I suggest that more partying would be the right way to go for the average student. The general principle, however, should be clear.
Above, my main concern is on factors like increasing the chances of a happy and healthy life. Other positive effects (of socializing, etc.) might be present, e.g. in that someone more socially active has a greater chance of finding a woman who does have long-term potential.
An important example is networking. Networking is not only a chore, but something ethically dubious in that it often amounts to using the employer’s resources for own gain, making choices to one’s own advantage at the cost of the employer, failing in due diligence towards the employer for own gain, etc. (This only partially through the networking as such. The more important part is the later events in the general family of mutual backscratching, be it with co-workers or with external parties.) The world needs less networking—not more.
The sad truth, however, is that not networking brings a considerable handicap in terms of e.g. career success—and to prevent others from networking, mutual backscratching at the cost of the employer, etc., is not practical.
A common thread among “What if”s and missed opportunities relating to humans (not limited to women), socializing, networking, etc., with me, is that I tend to automatically react to the immediate nature of e.g. a proposal to socialize, without giving the potential long-term effects due concern. A typical example is turning down a social activity that is too obnoxious or offered on too short a notice so that I can spend time on activities that I like better (including reading and writing). What invariably happens when I, with no previous notice, am offered a metaphorical Brussels sprout is that I turn it down. In the case of women, there is the additional complication that I long took their behaviors at face value—rarely even considering the possibility of an unstated wish or an openness to being approached before the (potential) opportunity had already passed. {A later text indirectly gives some possible examples of this sub-issue.)
Examples of this appear to be present at more or less any age, including e.g.:
As a (possibly) eight y.o., I visited the first meeting of a newly formed local “detective school” for children. When I came home, I learned that I had missed an episode of a favorite TV series—and immediately and categorically ruled out any further visits.
With hindsight, the increased social contacts and experiences might have been very beneficial to the young me—more so than a TV show. Certainly, I suspect that this was my mother’s idea behind sending me. (Together with her ill-advised prejudice against introversion.)
In another disco-related event, shortly before I moved to Stockholm to study, my step-aunt, who already lived there, offered to have her daughters take me to a few discos. I immediately declined, truthfully stating that such activities were of no interest to me.
Again, with hindsight, this might have been something that I could have benefited from, including by greater sexual and romantic opportunities, being exposed to a wider range of experiences, and gaining more social contacts. (The following few years were still the most socially active of my life; however, well below the typical student. Of course and in fairness to me, the typical student appears to overdo it rather considerably.)
Recently turning down participation in a “Blood Bowl” league started by my current colleagues—fearing that a long day in the office would be followed by forced activities in the evening. (OTOH, there are plenty of other forms of socializing in the office and I actually need considerable time alone, which has lead me to decline a repeated offer with greater deliberation—the first time around, however, the rejection was of the knee-jerk kind described above.)
By 2024, I have no recollection of this or what “Blood Bowl” at all is. From an Internet-search, it appears to be some type of board and/or role-playing game.
One of the central ideas in my first novel is that small changes can have large effects, including how a misunderstanding could give a newborn child a different name than intended, which, in turn and ultimately, brought a very great change in life. (TODO link after eventual publication.) Natural questions, then, include whether “obvious” equals “big”, “big” in decision equals “big” in effect, and similar.
A very similar situation did arise in my own life (but I do not remember whether this was a source of inspiration or just coincidence):
As noted, I ended up as an immigrant to Germany. But for one trifling event, many years earlier, this would likely not have happened: My mother claimed (incorrectly!) that more students took French as their mandatory third language than German. This ultimately made me chose German as my own third language, which by 1997 influenced my decision to go to specifically Germany, and, ultimately, caused me to have spent more than half my life (to date) in Germany.
During my own school years, we had mandatory English as a second language from the 4th grade, and a mandatory third language from the 7th. For the latter, the available choices (at least where I lived) were French and German.
My idea behind choosing German was to have a rarer skill and to do something rarer—and I would probably have gone with French, had my mother had her facts straight or if other information sources had been readily available. I do not know what would have happened, had I picked French: Maybe, I would have gone to France instead, preferred an English-language destination, or skipped the exchange student phase altogether; maybe, I would have chosen to return from, hypothetically, France even though I did stay in Germany; etc. However, I can say with certainty that my life would have been very different in a great many ways.
(While, likely, being similar in a great many others, because I would, in my core, have been the same person and would likely have made many other decisions, missed and taken many opportunities, whatnot, in a similar manner to in Germany. For instance, I would, almost certainly, still have preferred spending time with my computer or a good book to dancing in discos, with whatever that might imply in secondary consequences.)
An overlapping idea in my fictional writings is that it is rarely a single event/choice/whatnot that brings about a certain situation. For instance, even given maternal misinformation and my choice of third language, I might have made other choices that caused me to not live in Germany. (Including two very obvious points of potential divergence, namely, my decision to go to Germany as an exchange student and my decision to remain there afterwards; with countless smaller events that, like that maternal misinformation, might have influenced those decisions, with or without my awareness of the influence.)
In 2026, I skimmed this text and found that a particularity about the disco visit might be worth mentioning as paralleling the French–German mix-up (cf. above, in both cases), and how something very small can have a large effect. Namely, what if, in a slightly different reality, the girl had grabbed my hands while I was first moving in instead of out? (More on this below.)
In a next step, I realized that this mostly made sense if I had not danced with anyone else during my visit—and, indeed, even the actual events partly hinge on that. Here quite a bit has been lost in the abbreviated telling, with a lesson about how dangerous it can be to miss implicit assumptions, underestimate what others might need to know in order to understand the telling (be it about the events or about me), whatnot.
Now, with the caveats that the events are almost thirty years back, that the time passed has approximately doubled since my 2012 writings, and that my memories are very vague:
Not only am I reasonably certain that I did not dance with anyone, but chances are that I deliberately avoided the dance area, because this was where it was the most crowded/noisy/annoying/whatnot. (And I suspect that the “geography” of the disco simply was such that I needed to pass over the dance floor, where the hand-grabbing took place, in order to reach the exit.)
As to the rest of the building, I recall it as very large, with large portions outside the dance floor, and at least one area where a band held a separate live performance. (Think live performers at a bar—not rock concert at a football stadium.)
For my own part, I likely talked some with the other exchange students and/or our “teachers”, spent some time wandering around away from the dance floor, some more time listening to the band as a lesser evil, whatnot. (Forgoing even a lesser evil to just leave would be the rational decision, but I might have had some futile idea of getting some worth for my entrance fee.) Correspondingly, with these choices, the two main points where dancing might have happened was when I made my way over the dance floor at the beginning respectively end of my visit.
Why did I go in the first place? With hindsight, I do not know. (And, again, I have not been in a disco since.) I can speculate that I had underestimated how bad it would be, had thought that it might be an interesting experience (because of my relatively low prior exposure), had tried to force myself to “socialize”, or even had some idea of following expectations or not wanting to let others down.
To the last: I did, unsurprisingly, run into some of the others on occasion after leaving the “class” behind, including a likely single encounter with a specific “teacher”. During this encounter, she seemed almost annoyed at me, in a “naughty pupil skipping school” manner, complained that I was missing so much (I doubt it, based on the time that I had spent with the “class” in the early days) with a seeming implication that I should get my act together and join the others, and said that she thought that I had, for some reason or other, given up on the exchange studies and returned home—as if that would be the sole reason why someone would not “show for class”.
In other words, such ideas are not that far-fetched.
(Women, in particular, occasionally seem to have some such hang up. I recall in particular, and previously to this by some years, how my high-school graduation came with a parade, in which students so inclined could dress in costumes and march around a bit. I found this silly, was not so inclined, and joined the spectators instead. One of my female classmates was very critical and tried to badger me into participation with the claim that I would ruin it for everyone else.)
Now, to some degree, it was an interesting experience, as might be proved by the fact that I have repeatedly and over several decades written about it. It was, however, not a positive experience and not interesting in the manner that I might have anticipated (like, say, reading a book on an unfamiliar topic might be interesting, even if I have no deeper wish to pursue the topic).
Indeed, chances are that this disco visit backfired in at least two regards:
Firstly, I was already on the fence about a continued involvement with the “class”, because I found more value in my self-chosen activities, and the disco visit was what moved me to drop it. Without the disco visit, I might have stuck around for while longer. (And who knows what might have happened during that while?) More importantly, if the hand-grabbing had followed at the beginning of the visit, maybe events would have played out so that I gained a greater motivation to remain with the “class’ instead, be it because the disco visit had turned into something positive, e.g. the source of a girl-friend or even just a one-night-stand, or because the girl had turned out to be one of the others from the “class”.
Secondly, the events put me off discos in a very permanent and categorical manner, moving me from some mixture of disinterest and mild dislike to a strong dislike (“Never again!”). Similar to the above, if I had not gone at all, I might have been more open to discos in the future (of course, depending on what experiences I made with the actual next visit)—and if I had received enough of a positive impression by an early hand-grabbing leading to something good, I might even have seen enough pragmatic benefits (notably, but not necessarily only, in the “get girls” family) from disco visits to occasionally stomach them in order to reap those benefits. (And what difference might that have made in my life in other ways? I, especially, note that I lived for quite a few years just a stone’s throw from one of the largest discos in Cologne—and never once set foot in it.)
In the end, even this event might contain three notable “what if”s, not one, viz. “What if I had looked at the girl?”, “What if I had had this encounter at the beginning, not the end, of my visit?”, and “What if I had not gone at all?”. And this even just looking at developments reasonably compatible with my character (be it at the time or at all). Going beyond those, we also have to consider variations like “What if I, myself, had tried to pick up a girl?”, including the special case “What if I had asked one of the girls from ‘class’ to dance with me?”, and what would or would not have followed.
I have never enjoyed dancing, which might also play in with some of the above, but note e.g. the idea of talking reluctantly and how a “dancing reluctantly” is another example in a more general family of doing something that one does not want to do in order to gain some benefit, maybe, including later being able to do something that one does want to do. (Eating Brussels sprouts instead of potato chips, cf. above, is yet another example, when taken literally, and a good metaphor when not.)
To further spin details of behavior, it might e.g. be that I would have been more likely to overcome my urge to leave and, instead, look at the girl, had I left earlier—but if I had left earlier, chances are that I would never have passed her close enough for a grabbing to take place (and while she was not dancing with someone else, etc.), which might have left me no better off. (And with less to write about...)
In a bigger picture, it might often be coincidences, orders of events, and similar that make a difference. A slightly similar example occurred in a bowling alley a few years after the original writing: I worked as one of several freelancers in a project for some months. The nearest entertainment-anything in the vicinity was a bowling alley, to which we went together some three or four times, for want of other activities. The first few times, there were just bowlers bowling, which was fine by me, but the last time around came a horrifyingly annoying night with a loud announcer who ran around the individual lanes with a microphone, while being a nuisance, with excessive graphical displays, with pointless and loud music, whatnot. Had this been the first night instead of the last, I would, naturally, have taken this to be the natural state at this particular alley and turned any future visit down. (As is, the “last” arose through the project ending.) Indeed, had this been my first visit to any bowling alley, it would also likely have been my only. (As is, visits have been rare, but I have no objections to future visits, and they have certainly outnumbered visits to discos.)
The bowling alley could also be an illustration of how special circumstances reveal something previously unknown, shows problems previously unencountered, or similar, as discussed in a text on untested extrapolation and human nature.
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