Hit The “Back Space” Button!

Have you ever thought about time? Did you ever watch the movie “Back To The Future!”*. I did, watched  more than once, at the movies, and on television. Did you ever wish time was malleable? I bet you did without even thinking it through. Didn’t you wish you could go back and change the way things happened so you could live out a happier result than the one fate had left you with. I did, many times. There were a lot of things I would have changed, many of them that had nothing to do with me personally.

We are able to do that with lots of things in our lives, and we do it without thinking. If I make a mistake in something I have written on my computer, I just hit the back space button, make the correction and go on with what I have been doing. Many times in our lives when we have made a mistake in something important in our lives, we sometimes do our best to correct it, either physically, or by speaking to the person involved. We often pay attention sufficiently to correct a thing that we have thought about, then set about doing what seems to be the right thing to do.

But what if we have let too much time pass, and things cannot be corrected? What if feelings are too damaged to be repaired? What if we cannot just press the back space button? What if the injured party is already gone beyond our reach in one way or another?

What about all the situations where we are not the active party, but in that past time we might have made a difference, if we were paying enough attention, if we were brave enough, old enough, powerful enough. Could we have hit the back space button and made a difference? I’m sure we know about people in some of those cases who did. Don’t we wish we could have been one of them? Don’t we have so many regrets?

I am past my ninetieth birthday. There are so many things in my past that I wish I could have been more active in, could have changed. Most of you out there are a lot younger than me, but you have those memories too. If you think about it for a little bit I bet you will be able to remember some of those regreta too. I will even guarantee that there are some of those things you could do even today, if you paid attention, if you were strong enough, if you were brave enough.

This week my great-granddaughter is one yand a halk ear old. Today I saw her so full of the joy of being alive she was dancing on the spot to some internal music. It made me wish I could hit the space back button for myself in a real sense so that I could watch her grow up. But the distant future is a lever not in our power to guarantee.

But we can change our present as a consequence of the things we have learned. We could even do that now! Each and every day we have the power to change things that matter to us for the better. Just hit the back space button!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

                    Revenge is Good For The Soul Experts in social psychology, experts who treat us when stuff inside our heads go wacky, the people we often turn to, to help us emerge from a blue funk of various kinds, they all talk about how hating is bad for us. They say we are the beneficiaries when we give up harboring these negative feelings about people and events that have caused us pain. They even say we should find it in our hearts to forgive and forget. That may work for some things and for some people. But for me, there are things for which forgive and forget just doesn’t work. That is particularly true when opportunities exist to right the wrongs that have been experienced. And that is particularly true for me when there are opportunities for revenge. Some time ago there was a movie that came out, called “Inglorious Basterds”* It recounts the tale of a Jewish/American commando squad th...
Read more
                                                          ​ Coming To Attention!   Life comes at us from all directions. The nitty-gritty of daily living demands our primary attention, earning a wage, satisfying the boss, meeting a partner’s needs, raising the kids when it’s your turn to show up and be a parent. Then there is the job of keeping up to date with all you need to learn just to do all that. It’s a wonder we take the time to eat and sleep. When do we pay attention to what is going on all around us outside the narrow horizons of our lives? Shouldn’t that be an important element, what we do to impact the larger picture, in determining our fate even though our direct effect on events is often very small? And yet what is going on around us can have an impact on us that can be very large. I am in a very different place right no...
Read more
                            BEING ALIVE We don’t talk about that very much. But we surely think about it. Don’t we do that when we experience particularly joyful moments, or very sad ones? Mundane or marvelous, it is central to what we are about. How can we not think about it, write about it, agonize over it? We tend to keep those thoughts to ourselves unless we are sharing with those who are very close to us. Opening up to our feelings in a public way creates vulnerabilities. We may be laughed at or even ridiculed. It can be so much easier to do with strangers that we will never meet again. It takes more courage to do it face to face with those with whom we share our lives. But we do so with the hope that in exposing our vulnerabilities, we will be shared with in return and our trust will not be abused. There are sensations of being alive that are almost im...
Read more