0
Share on bsky
Two nights ago, a somewhat bad movie (I’m a movie snob with a secret penchant for rom-coms) led me to a more-than-somewhat profound realisation: if I could travel back in time and redo my life, would I?
To me, this is a frightening question, mostly because I worry the answer might be “yes.”
As someone who enjoys a good time travel story, this is something I’ve considered before; but what made this realisation different was that, for the first time, I took a step back from my life and really imagined what it would be like if changing the past was an option. How far back would I go? What would I change, and what would I wish to stay the same? Would I want to redo isolated incidents and choices, would I want entire phases of my life to be different, or would I want to start it all from scratch?
In the aforementioned bad-ish movie, one of the characters says:
“All I know is the mistakes I’ve made [insert slight editing] have made me who I am today. If I were to go back and relive it differently, I wouldn’t be me. And I like me.”
So the question is then: do I like “me”?
As a thought experiment, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche came up with the idea of the “eternal recurrence“’ or “eternal return,” which posits that we live our lives over and over again infinitely, and that in every life, every detail is exactly the same. To quote Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra:
“‘Now do I die and disappear,’ would you say, ‘and in a moment I am nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies. But the plexus of causes returns in which I am intertwined, it will again create me! I myself pertain to the causes of the eternal return.
I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life, in its greatest and its small, to teach again the eternal return of all things.”
This experiment aims to test our attitudes toward our own lives, and it asks us to investigate whether we would want to relive the life we have now eternally. “‘Do you want this again and innumerable times again?’” asks Nietzsche in The Gay Science.
By way of elaborating on the notion of the eternal recurrence, Nietzsche also talks about amor fati, or “love of fate.” According to him, we must not only accept the eternal recurrence, but we must also love it:
“My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it…but to love it.”
Even if life is suffering (which is another Nietzschean idea), we must nevertheless cultivate a life-affirming attitude and embrace our lives and all that they entail. By way of testing this attitude, Nietzsche asks us, “How well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to long for nothing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?”
So, what does all this mean for the time traveller who wishes to change that life?
In his book, Inspirations From Star Trek: How It Motivates Us to Create a Better World and a Brighter Future, author and trekkie Jack Zheng discusses the potential meaning of time travel as it is depicted in the Star Trek series. Zheng’s proposition that time travel is possible raises two questions: firstly, is the course of our lives—our fate—cast in stone, or is there room for free will and self-effort? And secondly, is it in our best interest to change the past, given that it is the source of who we are in the present? In the case of the question of fate and free will, there are many theories, my favourite being the words of the aforementioned movie’s character: “Fate is a tricky lady. When you try to figure her out, you just get more confused.”
With regard to the soundness of changing the past, Zheng makes specific reference to the Star Trek character, Captain Kathryn Janeway, and her desire to fix past mistakes. Zheng posits that, by changing the past, she misses out on the opportunity to learn from the errors she has made. Furthermore, when she fixes past mistakes by making sure they never happen, she fails to become the person who had the wisdom to learn from those mistakes and who was able to fix them. Like the unnamed character from the movie we shall not mention, Zheng believes that all our experiences—both good and bad—contribute to the person we are, and if we change even one thing, we risk being someone completely different.
Personally, if I could change one thing about my life, it would be using my time better. Life is short, and time is much more precious than many of us realise. And while I agree with Zheng that the experiences I’ve had heretofore have made me who I am, I do wish I could redo all those times that I, for example, stayed in bed because I was too lazy to get up, or watched something I’ve seen before because I was procrastinating, or avoided spending time with loved ones because I was too cold to go out. I should point out that for me, spending my time well is about more than efficiency and productivity—it is about engaging in meaningful activities, whatever they may be, that will ultimately contribute to my overall sense of contentment, enjoyment, and satisfaction. And if I could change one thing using time travel, it would be how I spent my time.
Of course, travelling back in time is not an option (I’m pretty sure), which means my only other alternative is to spend my remaining days on earth living the kind of life I wouldn’t want to redo. It is up to me to decide how I spend my time, and if being more mindful of this is the beginning of a new journey, then I would like to believe I am one step closer to coming to love fate and embracing the idea of the eternal recurrence. And as a start, I will stop feeling bad about “wasting” my time watching the movie that inspired this essay…because without it, I would still be the unaware and uninspired person I was two days ago.
~
Read 0 comments and reply