December 8, 2020 – As I was driving in to work this morning, I heard on the radio that today was pretend to be a time traveler day. The radio hosts were asking people to let them know where they would go if they could travel in time. There were a lot of “anywhere but 2020” responses; along with back to the prehistoric ages to see the dinosaurs and to 1988 to relive the Calgary Winter Olympics.
Part of me thought that just thinking about this could turn into an exercise in regret. Would you go back in time and tell your ‘past self’ to do something different? Would you warn your ‘past self’ about a bad decision? Would you just go back and tell your ‘past self’ that everything was going to be okay? Would you go back to another period in time just to see how people lived (like Outlander or Back to the Future)? Would you travel forward to see what lies ahead for the world, your city, your ‘future self’?
Where would I travel back to? My first thought was to travel back to when I was 20 and having second thoughts about getting married. I’d warn myself to look at my future ex-husband through a realistic lens and not through the lens of blind love and, truth be told, not marry him. Would I travel back to when I was 30 and tell myself to stick with my stable government job? If I had done that I could have avoided the constant job hopping for the next 15 years. Would I travel to 2015 and tell myself not to quit my great job just to move to Calgary? I could avoid facing the cold shoulder of a depressed economy (not to mention the cold shoulder of winter). Would I go back to high school and try harder to get better grades? Maybe I could have gone to college or university and received a degree instead of wandering aimlessly through jobs.
One interaction with your former self could change the whole trajectory of your life. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where you would go and, if you could go, would you change anything or just observe your ‘past self’ at that time? If you did speak to your ‘past self’, do you think your ‘past self’ would listen to you and take your advice or would your ‘past self’ ignore it?
Alternatively, what if you went to the future? Would you like seeing how your life had evolved? Would you talk to your ‘future self’ and ask for advice and, for lack of a better word, direction? Would you return to present day and make some changes now in order to change the trajectory?
It really is a lesson in accepting what you’ve become and knowing what you will become and being comfortable with that.
Diary of a DOW 