Time travel has always been a tricky thing, and for good reason. The idea of going back in time to undo certain mistakes usually ends up creating more problems. Because the life we live today is the sum total of all our past decisions and experiences. If you happen to just knock a single one off, if you change one decision, the outcome would be totally different.
Imagine your parents, during their talking stage, a single person had managed to drive a rift between them, making them never speak to each other ever again, the results would have been different today. What if they met years earlier than when they actually did? Or they meet years later than they were supposed to? Or what if they were simply just friends? These are all different possibilities, and they all have different outcomes. I can assure you that none of them end with you being born.
That’s how intricate and fragile time travel is. A simple misstep can unravel so many things. And by the time you return to the future, you’d be shocked by what you see. You might be having doubts about so many things right now due to a mistake you made in the past, and it seems like you’re still living in the shadow of that mistake, as if you just can’t catch a break. The mistake follows you everywhere.
I’m sure you imagine that going back in time will erase the mistake. If you never did it, then the consequences will never come to you. All is well, right? But then, you find out that since you never made the mistake, you never learned the lessons needed to toughen you up. The mistake forced you to sit up and take your life into your hands, it’s because of that mistake that you’re a better person. But without it, you never fell, so you never saw the need to get better and grow. And you got stuck.
Back in the day, I was a huge fan of The Flash and they did a lot of time traveling there. I saw how time traveling can change things totally. One time, Barry traveled so far that he erased one of his closest friends' son, and by the time the world reset, the man had a daughter instead. Or when he changed time and in the new timeline, his best friend’s brother was killed. There will always be consequences when you mess with time, because time will always have a natural order.
So, will I be willing to go back to change my mistakes? No. That’s not the point of mistakes. You won’t be able to take real risks if you know that you can always have a do-over. You won’t be able to grow if you’re sure that every time you fall, there’ll always be a cushion to catch you. This is because, as long as there’s a cushion beneath you, there’ll always be a reason to keep falling.
So no… time travel defeats the purpose of growing and learning. We move on regardless, we learn from our mistakes, and live life to the best of our ability. That’s how it should be.
