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!