I'm not sure the answer is obvious. In my life, stutter has been a consistent presence. If we were to imagine that stutter was not present in my life at all, I don't think we would know what the result would be. Whatever causes stutter, multiple factors and all, would have to not be present. So how much would that entail, exactly? And how would that change affect all the rest of it? Are there things that I would've missed out on, or that would've been significantly different? Or would it have mattered at all? How would we ever know how to conclude anything, if we start pretending the world might be different somehow? Where would we stop? Truth be told, I don't subscribe to the thought experiment, because I don't think we can learn anything from it. To conceive of our own stutter - to seek an understanding of our circumstance - we're not best served with looking at imagined scenarios. We should rather look at what's actually at hand and happening. So, a stutter is a negative thing, yes? But there are other negative things too. How do we deal with them? And there are positive things too. How do we seek those out and maintain them? I'm 42 and I'm doing okay. That's my focus right there. I need not imagine, because I'd much rather occupy myself with the real.