Would You Do It Again?
There is a question that is posed from time to time and depending on the verbiage of said question, it is one in which the answer affords the possibility of a simple yes or no, or, a volume as thick as War and Peace. I pondered the question the other day as the discussion began about the graduating class of 2020.
What’s the question? Well, the base question is this: “If you had it to do all over again, would you?”
On the surface, the question seems elemental. I think that given a few qualifying factors, the answer for most of us would be one in the affirmative, at least at first. One such qualifying factor that most often accompanies the question is, “If I knew then, what I know now.” I would say, “Well, hell yeah, I’d go back.” Certainly, there are people I’d like to see again and a few minor mistakes I’d like to correct. And given the latitude, there would be decisions I would consider a little longer.
To the average person, our knowledge of this type of excursion is limited to what we have learned from the movies. I mean Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty McFly taught us the dangers of tampering with the space-time continuum. Other movies have educated us to the fact that various paradoxes could potentially occur as a result of our manipulation of events that occurred in the past. I surmise then that all of the horrendous stuff would have to remain static in the space-time continuum. So even if we could go, well, all of the knowledge learned from heartache, all of the knowledge learned from death, all of the knowledge learned from bad decisions, would not be able to serve us, leaving us to have to learn it all again. This might be a game-changer. Would that alter our decision to want to go back in time?
Conversely, if we went back, it stands to reason that all of the life, all of the love, all of the laughter, could be relived in the same splendor. To be able to experience all of the “firsts,” as if they never happened, and to relive the “wins,” you know, the ones that meant something because of the work, sacrifice, and effort put forth. Yeah, that would be cool.
Despite the good, now that I have given it some thought, I just don’t think I’d want to live the bad again. Not that the bad in my life outnumbers the good, not by a longshot. Just the birth of my daughters is far, far, far more valuable to me than any loss or any failure. Of this, I would stake my life.
I think what is overlooked though, is that within most of us, we possess our very own time machine. We can experience all of those good times and never relive the bad. As long as we are fortunate to have our memories, well, we can spend as much time there as we like.