A while back I was having a discussion with some guys I work with about things we had done in our youth. Some things that we looked back on fondly and some, well, not so much. Someone posed that age old question: "what if you could go back and do it all again? Knowing what you know now." Now, at first that seems like a really great idea. Think of what you could change. Think of the bad choices you could avoid. The opportunities you could not miss this time around. My answer to this question, which I gave to my colleagues without hesitation, was that yes, I would like to go back and do it again. But I would want to end up right where I am now. My life isn't perfect, oh no, my Tender Lumplings, not at all but on the whole things are good. I have a job I like well enough with guys I like well enough. I have a bunch of animals and, best of all, the greatest girl in the world. And even though, given the chance, I would change a few things in my past, I would still want to be right here, right now.
See the key part of this idea is that second statement: "knowing what you know now". If you go back to being yourself at say 10 years old, having all the knowledge and experiences you've gained since then taken away, then you are essentially just yourself at 10 again. You can't say whether or not you would do everything the same as the first time or not. But if you become 10 again while retaining everything that has happened since then, then you are the person you have become over the intervening how-ever-many years, but younger, with decades to do over. Then you have a chance to make changes. You know what is going to happen and can act accordingly. I'm not talking about making big changes like stopping Kennedy from being shot or preventing 9/11. Even if you could put yourself in a position to try and do these things, if you succeeded or not, the entire course of history would be affected. So for me, wanting the do-over but not wanting the end result to change, that would be impossible. I'm just talking about small changes.
Well, it just so happens I had a chance to actually do this. Sort of. I a dream. And, my Tender Lumplings, if you have read my blog for a while, you know how my dreams can be.
So, I dreamt that I went back and got to do things over. It wasn't anything that happened in my real life, it was more like I was getting to do over an earlier dream. But I knew everything that was going to happen and I knew the parts I wanted to change. The whole thing happened in a hotel room with me and a bunch of strangers. There was a tornado and something to do with animals on the beach. The plot was rather vague. But the important thing was this: even though I knew what was going to happen next, the people around me were not acting as they should. They were not doing what I remembered them doing the first time around. Even the tornado was moving from west to east instead of the other way around. I found myself trying to make people do what I thought they should do and I couldn't. I had no control at all.
It made me think. If I really went back in time, knowing all I know now, and could do all this again, could I do it. Assuming everything and everyone acted exactly as they had the first time around, then maybe. But you can't assume that. Just like in the dream, I don't think anyone could have the control over everything that they would need. My problem is I would want to change things but keep the same outcome. I don't think that is possible. People who say they would go back to do it again but wouldn't change a thing, just re-live it as it happened the first time, well, I don't think that would be possible either. Only the ones who would want to go back, do things different and didn't care where the journey ended up would be able to do this. Maybe the would be the fun of it. The unknown. I don't know.
But since it is, at least for now, impossible, well it is all moot isn't it?
Until next time...
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