Would You Go Back?

Hello Dazzle! Thanks for coming and hanging out with me today, I’m glad that you are here. Today I want to talk about time. Elusive and caging; time is something that seems so concrete, yet is so vast that it is beyond our ability to comprehend fully.

Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

-Wordpress Prompt

This is a question that I frequently seen getting asked in some version or another. I find it an odd question. There has never been a time in my life that I felt tempted to return to some previous version of myself. While my life is certainly not perfect right now, it wasn’t any other time in my life either. What would the point of going back even be?

Going back in time in the hopes of changing things to make them better then they currently are is a tricky business that I personally have no desire to muck about with. I don’t believe that we can ever create a perfect happiness. Any version of my life that I could create would be a mixture of all the human emotions because that is the nature of being human. there would be no way for me to create a life for myself that completely avoids suffering. And how can anyone know which set of suffering is worth it all in the end?

Going back in time to just relive and revisit a special time without changing anything also seems odd and pointless to me. I’ve already live all those moments in time and already know how they will play out. So, what’s the point in going through them again if nothing changes from before? Can’t we already do that in our memories?

Perhaps, this question is driven by the idea that we can somehow recapture things that are now lost to us. But I’m not sure that we could, even with time travel. People that I have loved have died. Say that I could go back in time and see them again. Then what? Either I revisit all the time that I have already had, which would be rather like watching a movie and nothing like rekindling a lost relationship. Or I go back and try to change things. But to what end? Everyone dies. That end comes to us all at some point, in some fashion. There is no manner in which I could manipulate the plot to evade that final chapter.

Moving back into previous moments in our life would be like trying to experience our life in the same manner as a choose your own adventure story. Going back and making different choices each time to see how differently the story unfolds. But unlike the experiences of a choose your own adventure story, each life would be a linear adventure that could only be experienced once. Each time we go back to live it again, we open the door of possibilities to everyone else as well. This means that us making the same choices might not always lead us through the same story. Does asking your love to marry always lead to them saying “yes”? Because each time you ask you open the possibility for them to respond with “no.” Because the people in our lives are not NPCs that are locked into giving us the same response every time. If we have the power to change our choices, so does everyone around us.

This means that there is potential for the choices made by others to dramatically effect our lives every time that moved through the time line. An impatient driver chooses to run the red light rather then wait and that results in a terrible accident causing you to spend the rest of your days without the ability to walk. Or perhaps there is a friend who chooses to accept that job in another city and you don’t spend your lives together after all. Maybe the love of your life choose not to attend that event where you met and you miss out on the chance of meeting them. The power of choice is convoluted and complex with infinite possibilities extending from all the people that touch our lives. There is never any certainty in shaping the future.

Time is our most precious gift and our harsh mistress. We cannot evade it. Knowing and embracing this reality is what allows us to truly relish every moment that we are given. This coin is one that cannot be earned nor spent more then once. The most difficult part is that we are not allowed to know the current balance. Each day we must spend our allotment. There is no choice in the spending of it, only in how it is spent. That makes it something terrifying and awe inspiring. Even being able to step through the folds of time, would not evade this reality.

Well, that’s about it for my rambling today. Thanks for coming and spending some time with me. If you like my rambling then click on that like button. It really does help! Until we talk again, you take care of yourselves!