Reliving the past, Differently

We all love movies. And the thing we love the most about them is that they fulfill a certain imagination of ours, mostly by blurring the borders of reality and fiction. Something caught my attention the other day. I noticed how in some movies people keep trying to invent some kind of ‘time-machine’ that would allow them to travel back through time. And their goal is always the same: change the occurrence of a certain event by doing things ‘differently’. In the light of such a cliché concept I couldn’t help but wonder, is it something we really want? Sure, there are a lot of things we regret doing, mistakes that could’ve been avoided, some situations we could’ve handled differently… but in the end that’s what the past is there for, to enjoy and learn from.

A friend once told me never regret a single thing in your life, because it’s the past that has shaped your present and already affected your future, don’t regret its existence. Think of it this way; for instance, if it weren’t for multiple betrayals by someone you trusted how else would you learn not to trust them again? Another example, would you consider buying a product that didn’t suit you the first time around? Didn’t think so. It’s all in the process of remembering your past actions and decisions and building your new ones on new and improved basis.

I wonder, would going back in time with the help of so called ‘time-machine’ make things right by fixing errors, or would it only open up the possibility of new mistakes and faults arising? Imagine using your recently purchased time-machine, home edition, to go back in time and stop yourself from buying a car that turned out to have quite a short life-span. In the meantime, you find a ‘too-good-to-be-true’ offer for another car and decide to buy it, leaving the past behind. A month later, turns out the offer was in fact too good to be true, and the worst part is the new car didn’t even last as long as the one before.

As you walk today, remember you’re a different person than a couple of mistakes ago… ‘different’ as in wiser. You know the outcome of a scenario you’ve previously tried, so perhaps it’s time for a new one. Use your past as a reference and don’t waste time or energy regretting. After all, time-machines haven’t been invented just yet.