If YOU Could Go Back In Time In Your Life...

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BrokenolMarine

Well-Known Member
Dec 13, 2016
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Knowing what you know now...?

I have asked this question often sitting around with friends, and this was before I read this book. Say you could go back... knowing how your life has turned out... are there changes you would make? Different paths you would take knowing that with the "Butterfly Effect," a small change could make dramatic differences in the long run. Not always for the better.

I always say, for better or worse, I would avoid the blind date that led to meeting my first wife and the three years of heartache and pain that followed. There were cars I wish I hadn't bought, and some I should have never sold. Women I shouldn't have dated... but those actions wouldn't be worth the risk of a change...

So... if you could go back... would you?
Honestly... I don't think I would... even though I'm broken and might be able to change it. The new path could be a lot shorter and much more painful.
 

Doc Creed

Well-Known Member
Nov 18, 2015
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There's an old saying that 'he who regrets nothing learns from everything'...this bugs me. I think regret serves a purpose; it is a type of grieving that hopefully leads to acceptance and avoidance of cyclic mistakes. So, yes, I'm one who'd go back in time. This isn't to say that I wouldn't commit a whole new set of mistakes (and, therefore, new regrets) but it would satisfy that human longing for atonement, a correcting of wrongs, a settling of scores.
Plus, it would be my duty to rid the world of M.C. Hammer parachute pants.
 

Walter Oobleck

keeps coming back...or going, and going, and going
Mar 6, 2013
11,749
34,805
I think I was seven. There's wasn't anything to do so I stepped into the pantry and swung my arms, watching myself in miniature in the round silver drawer pulls. Pantry. Summer, but the pantry was cold, designed that way maybe, north side of the house. Windows open, house quiet, and I spot a letter on the shelf, next to the Manhandlers. Yeah, if I could turn back time, as the song has it. You life turns on a dime and that was mine. Everything since has been defined by that moment and even now...even now...as another song has it, all it takes is a glimpse and I'm reeling. O western wind, when wilt thou blow?
 

ghost19

"Have I run too far to get home?"
Sep 25, 2011
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There's an old saying that 'he who regrets nothing learns from everything'...this bugs me. I think regret serves a purpose; it is a type of grieving that hopefully leads to acceptance and avoidance of cyclic mistakes. So, yes, I'm one who'd go back in time. This isn't to say that I wouldn't commit a whole new set of mistakes (and, therefore, new regrets) but it would satisfy that human longing for atonement, a correcting of wrongs, a settling of scores.
Plus, it would be my duty to rid the world of M.C. Hammer parachute pants.

Sounds good Doc. You take care of the parachute pants, I'll kidnap the members of Blues Traveler and Limp Bizkit before they become a band, then stash them all somewhere and make them listen to their own albums endlessly. Ridding the world of those two bands has to be worth going back...
 

Doc Creed

Well-Known Member
Nov 18, 2015
17,221
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Sounds good Doc. You take care of the parachute pants, I'll kidnap the members of Blues Traveler and Limp Bizkit before they become a band, then stash them all somewhere and make them listen to their own albums endlessly. Ridding the world of those two bands has to be worth going back...
Let's do it, lol. Surely that would deserve some sort of Medal Of Honor. A selfless act. ;-D
 

skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
15,683
92,168
USA
nope nope. There have been a lot of total crap things in my life, but many great things arose from those times as well. Trying to change the past never works (we've all read the books and seen the movies--lol) because one change spawns others that aren't so desirable. Better to take the lesson offered and move on :)
 

Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
Moderator
Apr 11, 2006
53,634
236,697
The High Seas
I think I was seven. There's wasn't anything to do so I stepped into the pantry and swung my arms, watching myself in miniature in the round silver drawer pulls. Pantry. Summer, but the pantry was cold, designed that way maybe, north side of the house. Windows open, house quiet, and I spot a letter on the shelf, next to the Manhandlers. Yeah, if I could turn back time, as the song has it. You life turns on a dime and that was mine. Everything since has been defined by that moment and even now...even now...as another song has it, all it takes is a glimpse and I'm reeling. O western wind, when wilt thou blow?
This post intrigued me. A letter on a shelf? Care to share more? Or maybe you don't want to. I understand.
 

skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
15,683
92,168
USA
I think I was seven. There's wasn't anything to do so I stepped into the pantry and swung my arms, watching myself in miniature in the round silver drawer pulls. Pantry. Summer, but the pantry was cold, designed that way maybe, north side of the house. Windows open, house quiet, and I spot a letter on the shelf, next to the Manhandlers. Yeah, if I could turn back time, as the song has it. You life turns on a dime and that was mine. Everything since has been defined by that moment and even now...even now...as another song has it, all it takes is a glimpse and I'm reeling. O western wind, when wilt thou blow?
You're a lovely writer, Walter. I really mean that.
 

BrokenolMarine

Well-Known Member
Dec 13, 2016
128
587
65
Okay, in my scenario, I usually tell the folks they can go back to ONE spot in the track of their lives, change one thing, but then they have to live it forward from there. They can't jump back out and come back to the present and see what changes, if any, they have wrought, then jump back and reverse them. ONE spot. High School, Your First Job, Your First, (Second) Marriage. Or... that one time, just one, when you drank too much on a business trip and .... lost control and ... told your boss what you thought of him, or picked up that gal in the bar, or .... missed that important meeting and it changed the positive track you were on forever. (Nope, not me, never drank at all.) Grew up with a family filled with alcoholics and addicts...
 

Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
Moderator
Apr 11, 2006
53,634
236,697
The High Seas
Okay, in my scenario, I usually tell the folks they can go back to ONE spot in the track of their lives, change one thing, but then they have to live it forward from there. They can't jump back out and come back to the present and see what changes, if any, they have wrought, then jump back and reverse them. ONE spot. High School, Your First Job, Your First, (Second) Marriage. Or... that one time, just one, when you drank too much on a business trip and .... lost control and ... told your boss what you thought of him, or picked up that gal in the bar, or .... missed that important meeting and it changed the positive track you were on forever. (Nope, not me, never drank at all.) Grew up with a family filled with alcoholics and addicts...
Back to high school for me.
 

mjs9153

Peripherally known member..
Nov 21, 2014
3,494
22,165
There was a point in my college football career where one of the coaches told me I had the ability to move on to the pro ranks.. And I just laughed him off.. mainly because he coached the unit I played against every day so he was very hard on us, I didn't think he was being serious. I now realize he was, and I wonder what would have happened if I had applied myself like I should have.. On the reverse, I know for a fact that I have saved some lives at my job that I chose. So if I went back and pursued the football angle, would someone else have saved those lives or would they have died without me there to take action? Interesting question,who knows..