I often think of our memories as windows to the past. As we get older, we end up with more and more windows. Perhaps we like to look at the windows, and to enjoy fleeting moments of what we see there.
People quite often engage in the mind exercise of considering whether they would like to go back in time, and if they do go back, what would they like to change?
When I think about the whole idea of going back in time, I'm not sure that I would really want to go back in time to change anything. I'm pretty content with how things have turned out, on the whole.
Which leaves me with the thought that to any extent that I would want to go back in time, it would merely be to be a visitor in that past, and to re-experience some particular feeling that went with some particular event or moments spent with some particular person.
That's quite different from wanting to time travel to change things!
For those of us who prefer a relatively stable and known existence, perhaps the allure of the past lies in the fact that what we see there is a fairly known quantity. The past is constant and not subject to change.
I am really not an adventurous type, and I never was an adventurous type, even when I was a teenager or in my twenties and "filled with piss and vinegar," as they say.
I have always had a preference for a certain sameness and predictability in my world, perhaps a reaction to the fact that we moved so much when I was a kid and I never felt like there was even a moment stability anywhere.
Since I didn't have that stability as a kid, I have tried to create it for myself as an adult.
Some people look at the whole exercise of going back in time and potentially changing something as an opportunity to buy Yahoo stock at $2 or Microsoft stock at $2 so they can just be super rich today.
Perhaps that offers a fun bit of mental gymnastics, but I have my doubts that that riches actually would make anybody more content with their world. We often think that money is the answer to everything, and whereas it's certainly nice to be able to pay your bills it's usually also true that money can only buy you short-term excitement but not so often long-term contentment.
Besides, people who want to change things in the past often overlook the relatively obvious fact that doing so will massively change anything that is going on in their present, including erasing things you perhaps worked really hard in order to achieve... which happened precisely as a result of the past being the way it was!
Which is why I tend to think that the past is a nice thing to look back at, and enjoy a little reminiscence, but otherwise is best left alone!
I suppose I have pretty much always been a futurist of sorts. What I mean by that, is I have usually spent more time looking forward, than looking backwards.
I certainly enjoy reminiscence and sitting in my memories, but most of my orientation in life is forward, towards the future. Often - perhaps to my detriment - that looking forward has extended into an imaginary time that might not come to pass until far beyond my lifespan has expired!
Perhaps that future Fascination is a bit of a reflection of my disappointment in Mankind's inability to move forward and to truly invest in building its future, rather than destroying itself with wars and bombs and terrorist attacks.
Sometimes I worry that we will never make it to that more hopeful future.
I realize this post ended up wandering all over the place... but maybe it was meant to.
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Created at 2024-03-07 01:50 PST
1098/2356
I'd only want to go back to change how my husband's illness was dx'd and to change the pain he went through. If that couldn't happen, nevermind.
I just feel there are a few things I’d think of about the past and I’d feel like going back to the past and there are some crazy experiences that will make me think of not going back to the past
Well, it is always good to move forward to face what we have before us