As we welcome in the new year, I often hear people musing

about what they would have done differently. Or, if I woke up

at some younger age, with everything I know now, what

would I do?

I have thought about this at length. And I tell you, if I had

ever woke up young again it wouldn’t be a gift. It would be a

nightmare so complete, I’d likely fall into madness.

I’d spend my life trying to reproduce an irreproducible

future.

Trying to find the same people. Create the same moments. Hoping the same miracles would happen again.

But they wouldn’t. In fact. They couldn’t.

I’d have to attempt to live my life to the exact instances of

my past in a desperate and vain attempt to reproduce the future.

Attempt to find my ex wife on the exact day. Have the same moments. Make love on the same night. Hoping it brings my daughter into the world. But it won’t. Because to attempt to reproduce a miracle is a fools errand. Likewise I’d have to relive all the same sufferings again. Relive the same deaths, the same tragedies. With full

knowledge of the events coming and no ability to halt them.

The only course of action is a selfish one. To detach

completely from the life you once had. Abandoning all or forcing yourself to have foreknowledge of tragedies your loved ones will

suffer.

Surely you could attempt to be closer to them knowing these

things. But again, changing the future means any children you’ve had will never come to be. Or worse, new unforetold events.

Perhaps you stop your mother dying in a car accident. But by

doing so the grief that once fused your family is no longer present. You family fractures in new ways. You take a job in a new city, you never meet your wife. Your children and their children are never born. Their exact laugh, their particular mind, are now a cosmic impossibility. Your sister or brother meet the same fate. Their bloodline meets the same fate. Worlds once known are gone.

Because any event now outside your control is once again part

of the symphonic cacophony of the vast experiences of the universe.

Love isn’t a destination you can navigate back to.

Children aren’t outcomes you can plan for.

They are emergent phenomenon born from chains of events so

fragile that changing one step erases them entirely.

Never to be created again.

Changing the past loses the future you’re trying to save.

As I said earlier, the only way to “win” that thought

experiment is to detach completely from the life you once had.

Sacrificing the known future and known lives that come of it for a

new unknown. And new unknown regrets.

Let your past guide you. Be grateful for it. Understand it.

Learn from it. For suffering and love, pain, sacrifice, joy… these

things bring us wisdom.

Wisdom to deal with their inevitable recurrence.