There are four dimensions. The X, Y, Z axes (what’s traditionally considered 3D). And then there’s Time.
My dad was talking about it earlier and he said something that stuck with me and will probably stick with me for years, and then decades: the first three dimensions, you can manipulate. You can drive thirty feet forward and reverse or take a U-turn if you want. But you can never reverse time.
I’ve blogged before about spending too much time thinking about time. Dwelling on the past and the future at extent when it barely gives us anything except stress. Now, I wanna talk about not giving time enough attention. Because trust me, people, it’s important.
I didn’t realize how important until a few people close to my heart nearly lost it. Or when they moved away. Or when we stopped talking. Or when I lost our prom and grad and can’t seem to turn the clock back and get that closure of actually graduating high school. I swear, college feels like an extension of high school because I feel like I never really left…
My brother said something earlier too:
I think time is like this…
You lose time, you realize how important it was, feel the pain of losing it, and realize how bad losing it is.
And it occurs me, society strives to solve so many issues. Trying to cure cancer and COVID. Trying to end world hunger and gain world peace. Trying to make sure WWIII never happens. It’s all these large scale grand catastrophes that we try to prevent.
But what about this very simple, basic issue… losing time?
Sure everyone talks about how important time is. Old people talk about missing their younger days. Teachers and bosses praise time management. Legit the majority of phones and comupters have built-in calender apps. The importance of time surrounds us.
But just because people are told how important their lungs are, does it prevent them from smoking? Just because people are told how important their time is, does it prevent them from losing it? Or worse, wasting it?
And what about the cure for the ramifications?
You have chemo for the cancer and oxygen tanks and vaccines for COVID.
What do you have for losing time?
The thing is… it’s one of those things you don’t have a remedy for…
And I know for a fact that someone out there is gonna try to stomp on my philosophical discussion and bring up the possibilities of time travel, so shall I adress that now itself?
Have you ever watched D.C.’s Flash? (yes, I’m a D.C. girl! And I’m hella damn proud of it! Not that Marvel isn’t okay too…) If you haven’t, here’s the gist: Flash a.k.a Barry Allen is a superhero and the (fictional) fastest man alive. And his super speed gives him the ability to time travel. So, okay, how frikin’ cool is that? Right?
Wrong!
I mean, okay, it’s cool. It’s immensely amazing!
But the results of repeated time travel trying to alter the past, trying to get back lost time, trying to make life better… not so cool.
At one point in Barry Allen’s life (S3Ep1: “Flashpoint” and S3Ep2: “Paradox”) he decides to go back in time and save his mother’s life. This causes his current existence to completely get out of whack. So, he decides maybe he should’ve let life happen the way it originally did. But it was too late. When he went back and this time decided not to save his mother from being murdered like had originally happened since he was just a kid, he comes back to the present only to find that it’s still not what he had left behind the first time. And he tried again and again and – one too many times – again. And he failed. None of the possible sequences of time gave him the perfect conflict-free life he ached for.
Another example I can think of for why time travel doesn’t work to give back lost time comes from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. About five years ago, I believe, I first watched the episode I’m thinking of – S2Ep20: “It’s About Time”. In this episode, the main pony, Twilight Sparkle is visited by a future version of herself who looks like she’s been to hell and back – and maybe a garbage can or two. Future Twilight tries to warn Present Twilight about a looming danger, but runs out of time because of being interrupted by Present Twilight and isn’t able to tell her what that catastrophe is before being zapped back to the future. Twilight ends up wracking her brain and going through many obstacles attempting to find out what she was supposed to prevent from happening. At the end of it all, she realizes she’s in the exact same state of crap that Future Twilight was in at the beginning of the episode. It turns out she was trying to warn herself not to stress over a catastrophic event that in fact wasn’t going to happen, except being interrupted by herself, she ended up causing those events to transpire anyway.
So, you see, time travel doesn’t work the way we wish it could. And it’s only this messed up in fiction. Imagine how much more difficult and volatile it would be in real life if real people could really make it work? (Personally, I hope they don’t… I don’t want someone trying to go back and prevent WWII only to accidentally put forth WWIII in motion… Nope! Don’t want that!)
Anyway… Back to my original point..
There is no cure or remedy or solution to losing time. It’s something that just can’t be ‘fixed’. So, then, why stress on it?
I get it, we all have unfinished business and regrets and long for the simpler times (although, c’mon, did those actually ever exist for anyone?), but constantly begging for something that’s gone isn’t going to bring it back.
But there is something that might help those who feel like they might have wasted yesterday, because I sure as hell know that I’ve had those days… We all have those days. Hell, presidents and billionaires have probably had those days. And anyone says who they haven’t is lying. And your definition of what it means to waste time is your own. And here’s what you do: Whatever you did yesterday, learn from your mistakes and just strive to make today better. Try to make it so good that even if you don’t make it to tomorrow, you’ll have no regrets. And then maybe tomorrow, you’ll regret today. So, then make tomorrow the least regretful day possible. And regret means whatever it may mean to you. And the day after that, strive to make it better that what it was. And live each day by the day. And maybe it’s not better than yesterday. Maybe compared to today, yesterday was like striking oil. Or eating a candy bar – whatever floats your boat. And that’s okay!
It’s okay not to live a perfect moment every moment. Because perfect doesn’t exist. Time is so important and the worst way you can waste it is by worrying that you’re wasting it, worrying that your every single moment isn’t the most perfect that existed.
A friend of mine once lost a sports match. And I told him to not let one point lost affect the next. I told him to enjoy each and every single point, even the ones he lost. And maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t that little pep talk… All I know is he won the next match he played. And even if he didn’t, there would be another to look forward to.
Look forward to life… Look forward to the unpredictable, and look back on a life lived well. Live by no regrets. Because having regrets isn’t what makes a good life. Embracing life for all its good and bad is what makes a good life.
And hey, that’s an excellent point to end off on, because I’m totally doing a post on that next!
So, for now, au revoir mes amis! (Actually, can I say au revoir, even though I’m not actually going to be seeing you? Eh, you get the point). And life your best life – even if it’s not a twenty-four-seven perfect life – today, tomorrow, and forever…
