Original Broadway Cast of If/Then
What If?
[GUITAR PLAYER]
Here's how it starts
And here's how it ends

[SOLOIST]
Two different hearts
Maybe lovers or friends

[ALL]
No one knows the ways
The long road bends

[SOLOIST]
Once every day your life starts again

[GUITAR PLAYER]
No one can say just how or just when

[ALL]
Somehow the world turns inside out and then
And then
What if? What if?
What if you wonder?
What if? What if?

[ELIZABETH]
What if I always belonged
In the city the moves me
With people who thrill me
The marriage, the mortgage
I left them behind me
Before they could kill me
My plan is just perfect
Courageous and daring
To start my life new
Now I look at this morning
It moves me to say
"Oh my God, what the hell did I do?"
I can do to this, I know
I just need to take care
You're smart, self sufficient
And hyper aware
As I'm flirting with forty
There's no time to wait
And I can't help but feel
I'm already too late!

Tell me what if I'm bound for disaster?
What if I fall off the cliff?
Will I ever just learn how to live
And not wonder what if?
What if?

Do I go there with Lucas
Or stay here with Kate?
Why do I do this?
Obsess and debate
I've been prudent and cautious
For all my life long
And most of my choices
Turned out to be wrong
Tell me how can this make any difference?
How could it matter at all?
How do I make such a major event
Out of something so small?

[JOSH]
Once every day your life starts again
No one can say just how or just when

[ALL]
Somehow the world turns inside out and then
And then
And then!
What if? What if?
What if you wonder?
What if?

[ELIZABETH (ALL)]
See each choice you make as kind of a loss
Each turn that you take
And each coin that you toss
You lose all the choices
You don't get to make
You wonder about
All the turns you don't take
And so what if I’d gone there with Lucas? (What if? What if?)
And then what if I'd answered that phone? (What if? What if?)
Think of all of the things you’d have done
If only you'd known...

(Here's how it starts
And here's how it ends)
What if I’d gone there with Lucas?
(Two different roads
And how each one bends?)
What if I stayed there with Kate?

(And then)
What if? What if? (And then)
What if?
What if I knew? (If you knew would know what to do?)
What will I do? (If you knew would know what to do?)

What if I choose will I change things forever?
If I leap will I fall of a cliff?
If I choose then there's no turning back
No turning back
No turning back!

And you wonder what if? (What if? What if?)
What if?