Today my
manager and friend John mentioned how he had been thinking about whether or not
he would go back into his life and redo things. He said that today was the
first time he felt that he wouldn't want to go back.
Would I go
back? Would I want to change the way things happened? There’s several different
ways “going back” could be interpreted. If I went back with all the knowledge I
have now, back to being a child, it might cause more harm than good. I would be
too enlightened, an adult in a child’s body. I would become segregated
(possibly from my own volition or by simple ‘she behaves differently, I won’t
be friends with her’). If I, as I am today, could go back and visit my child
self as an apparition of sorts, I may be more inclined to do so. I could choose
the particular moments where I would visit myself, the most prime moments when
I need that slap in the face.
At the same
time though, if I did have that slapping awake moment, I don’t think that I
would have learned half as much as I did learn. And I’d say that a majority of
the times when I've been going on a path that inevitably led to some kind of
pain for me, my friends or my family was there telling me to watch out, don’t
do that, the same things that I would say if I went back. I suppose that this
is more of a question of regret than anything else. Do I regret the things that
happened in my past and if I had the possibility would I change it so I didn't have to go through those things? John said to me that going back might end up
making things worse than they already were, but I said back to him that it
might also make it better. In my personal opinion though, I would agree with
him. Of all the negative experiences I've had up to this point, with love and
life and responsibility and whatever else, I can’t really say I regret them all
enough for me to want to go back and erase them. Sure, the situations that lead
up to my lesson learned were god awful and I wish that they did not have to be
so drastic and painful for me, but either way I learned that life lesson that
someone telling me ‘don’t do that you’ll regret it’ never taught. Perhaps if I
were to go back though, that may be so startling to me that I might actually
listen. But so many other factors would come into play then, and I don’t know
if the way I carry myself will really be affected by that as much as I think. I
might just stick to my guns anyway.
Perhaps if I did
go back, without any kind of knowledge from the future, I would go through
other types of experiences that would lead me to the same point that I am now,
just without as much pain. If I were more receptive of those people warning me,
things may have been easier on me back then. But then I would be a different
person altogether, me not listening was part of my character. It may not be a
good trait but that’s what makes me, me. And at this point, I've kind of learned
not to just throw away all that when they tell me “AMANDA don’t fucking do that”.
John went on
to muse about how this now might be another period of us going back, perhaps
for the third or fourth time. We just might not know. It’s interesting, because
I know he’s an atheist. But I, as an agnostic, also wonder about that. Maybe
when we die we get a choice, do you want to go again? Forget everything? This
is a much deeper subject, one that I’m not totally prepared to delve into for
now. Death is still such a large fear for me.
After some
more conversation the question of my scholarly preoccupations arose and we discussed
my reasons for studying psychology. I told him that I am extremely interested
in sciences, I just didn't pay enough attention in high school to make that
future as possible as I would like. He shared this sentiment, saying that once
he started telling himself “I’m not good at that” he stopped trying. Just
because you’re good at one thing doesn't mean you can’t be good at other
things, I told myself “I’m good at English, so I don’t need to try at math.” If
I were to go back and change anything at all, it would be this: put in that
extra effort, don’t listen to that voice in your head that says you can’t do
it, that you can’t be better. Put in the extra effort that you reserved for
college. Knowledge is not predetermined, it is a set of building blocks and you’re
in control of how you build it up. I did a whole lot of nothing growing up, and
for not very good reasons. I could have taken that AP Physics class. I could
have. I made too many excuses. My dream was to work for NASA, to pursue that
final frontier…It still is. I know my future is not finite now, if I wanted it
enough I could do it…I just feel as though my life has fallen into a pattern
for my EWM/Psychology life path. For now.
I don’t think
I would go back. My experiences have made me who I am. My experiences happened
in the first place because of who I am, and they just continue to develop me. I
know I’d learn one way or another, but I’m happy with how things have gone so
far.
