We all say this. I've said it at times, "If I could go back I would go to college.", or do something else differently or something else. I especially, for vain reasons I suppose, use to wish I could go back and not go bicycle racing with Ginny Bell that day 57 years ago. Here we are on the little one lane road racing madly along, I on the outside, she on the inside. Suddenly we see a car coming toward us. She cuts right across in front of me to get out of it's way. I crash into her bicycle and go flying over the handlebars and smash my face on the road sustaining lots of scrapes and bruises, etc. I also chipped my front tooth and made it crooked. Right there in the front of my mouth for many years after was this ugly chipped and crooked tooth. I suppose it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought, but since we were poor I couldn't get it fixed. It's possible this one thing altered my personality and maybe the course of my life. Silly you say? Maybe.
Have you ever seen the movie "The Butterfly Effect" starring Ashton Kutcher? It's about this guy that keeps going back over and over to change something that happened in the past. It isn't the greatest movie I suppose, but I have a penchant for quirky movies. I liked it a lot. I'm not totally sure (without doing a ton of research) where they got the idea for this movie. I read a short story by Ray Bradbury many years ago called The Sound of Thunder, and it seems to me it must be that story that gave the movie it's title at least. This story is ultimately about how the entire future of mankind was drastically changed by one person making one tiny change in the past.
So when you say, "I wish I could go back and....", remember that things are how they are because of all that has been. If you changed even one tiny thing, it could lead to drastic changes thereafter. Supposing for example that your prescence somewhere that you otherwise wouldn't have been would make one person leave from somewhere five minutes later than they had originally left and then that person's car is smashed to smithereens by a truck. And so it goes... My daughter tells me that every single thing that has happened so far has led to this point. Had her father and I not divorced, I would not have moved from my beloved mountains to this valley. She would not have met her future husband. Her little beautiful son would not exist. And so it goes.... Without all that has gone before, we wouldn't be where we are right at this instance. Maybe where you are isn't where you would like to be, but then again who knows where the alternate path could take you.
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Am I Ginny Bell? If so, then my version is much different than yours. Funny how we remember things so much differently.
ReplyDeleteJ.
No, you aren't Ginny Bell. Funny to think I might call you that. She was a couple years older than I with long dark hair. Can't remember her last name.
ReplyDeleteSeveral things go through my head reading this. One is.. children make regrets an impossibility because if you change the slightest thing that came before them, then they might not be. The second one is.. it sort of reminds me of It's a Wonderful Life. The way that Clarence makes George magically not exsist alters everyones future (His brothers dead, his uncles in an asylum, the town is owned by Potter, etc). It's in that moment that George realizes what a great effect he's had on everything. But then I imagine that people don't realize how great an effect they have on things either.. Perhaps if we all had a Clarence to show us... intresting.
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