About Time
Even if it's broken, why fix it?
If only we could travel through time and fix all of the mistakes that we made. We could craft the perfect life, one carefully curated to avoid all of the randomness, stress, and embarrassment of reality.
Maybe I would go back and stop elementary school Joe from confessing his love to his crush via email. Or tell college me that staying that extra day at formal to hang out a bar the night before our Derivatives final was a bad idea. Finally, I’d tell 2023 me to always make sure that the office bathroom stall door was securely locked on Chipotle Day, thus sparing the poor Janitor from a week’s worth of sleepless nights.
Time travel would be the ultimate superpower, right?
About Time
A few weekends ago I watched About Time, a 2013 romantic comedy and one of Sam Lane’s favorite films. If you ever want to see him tear up just throw this on. Don’t worry, you’ll be crying too.
In the movie, protagonist Tim Lake discovers the men in his family have the unusual ability to travel back in time. Tim’s life story is told through his experiences with love, and his attempts to use his time-traveling powers to build the perfect life.
By the end, he realizes that even this mighty power is unable to contend with the randomness of life. Sometimes he will try to fix one event in the past, only to realize that it wiped away another great moment from his current life. Tim is forced to confront pain and suffering, in order for the inordinate moments in his life to exist.
Why Change the Past?
About Time shows us that life isn’t something that can be fixed, and we’re foolish if we believe that we need to try. It’s an offshoot of nature, a force with greater strength and much longer lifespan than ourselves. Like so many things in nature, the more we try to fight it, the more we try to create an ideal version, the more it will resist.
The best things in life may be the ones that are far beyond our control. Relationships and friendships aren’t something that can be created in a laboratory (Sorry AI girlfriend investors). And if they are created by force as Tim finds out, they will likely fail.
Even our careers are so dependent on factors outside of our control. Think about every group project or team you have been a part of. There was always at least one wild card participant whose actions you couldn’t possibly anticipate.
I like to think about one of my final presentations in college, when my partner showed up and whispered to me, “I’m sorry I’m way too high to do this right now.” They proceeded to go gargoyle-mode in the corner of the room while I ad-libbed a 45-minute presentation. As I learned in the ensuing Q&A session, Nike was not the first deity to wear sneakers and its original slogan was not, “Pillows, for your feet.”
Sure, in the moment I would have loved to travel back and choose a different partner, but now I wouldn’t want to change anything about that story.
It’s natural to want to change moments where we made a bad decision, or times that don’t portray us in our best light. Spending too much time dwelling on our past mistakes and writing alternate scenarios of who we would be if only we did X or Y does little good for moving us forward.
Maybe the only option is to accept that most of this silly little journey is completely out of our control. Hell, even if I could go back in time and change it, I’d probably find some other way to royally screw things up.
Tim’s final epiphany is that he doesn’t need his time traveling powers to be happy. Instead, he chooses to live one day at a time. Each day is spent appreciating the beautiful imperfections around him, laughing at the utter absurdity of it all.
He realizes that where he is and who he has around him would have never come to be without all of the randomness and misery that came before.
I’ll leave you with a parting quote from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian:
For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain
With a bow
Forget about your sin - give the
Audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance
Anyhow
Now let’s get to the fun stuff.
Life as Explained by Bill Watterson
The Digital Bookshelf
A popular poem from one of my favorite poets / authors. A deeply troubled man whose vices could be their own novel. Then again, what great artist wasn’t absolutely loony tunes?
Audio Landscape
Welcome Home - Coheed and Cambria
I’ll never forget when my friend Jordan first threw this on Rock Band. I instantly became addicted to both the song and the game. My life peaked when I got 100% on this song on Expert.
Till next time,
Joe
Any thoughts or criticisms are greatly appreciated.
This fits in perfectly with the concept of amor fati, which I've been thinking a lot about. There are two thoughts in particular that I really like. First, all the good and bad things that happen make you who you are, so even if you could have just the good, you wouldn't be the same person. And second, the difficult things in life are what challenge us to grow.