Jeremiah Tolbert

I have a recur­ring day­dream about time travel.  It is noth­ing so exotic as trav­el­ing one hun­dred mil­lion years into the past, or some­thing so noble as trav­el­ing 70 years to right the wrongs of his­tory.  My time travel day dream involves my own lifes­pan and my own small life.

“What if,” I ask myself, “I woke up one day and I was 16 again, but I remem­bered every­thing that will and has hap­pened.  Imagine reliv­ing my life with that foresight.”

There’s a sim­ple joy to this notion, but the under­ly­ing thing that seems so small but is felt so large is that you know with­out a doubt that things are going to turn out okay (except for that weird time machine acci­dent that sent you back in the first place).  You could have this under­ly­ing con­fi­dence in your actions. 

I think that’s what is most appeal­ing about it.  It’s not about a chance to get to do things dif­fer­ently so much as it is a chance to do many things over again and instead of being con­sumed with doubt and fear,  you get to have con­fi­dence in your­self and your suc­cess.  Or in an out­come of some sort anyway.

The time trav­eler knows what’s going to hap­pen.  Knows she’s going to be okay.  The time trav­eler can then live in the moment and just enjoy it.  Like reread­ing a book you loved as a child, one you’ve reread so often that the sharp cor­ners of ten­sion have smoothed away by the waves of familiarity. 

We all look for ways to live deeper, richer lives.  To feel more keenly.  To make sharper obser­va­tions.  The time trav­eler has the men­tal pro­cess­ing time to do this, pro­vided they keep course to what they know.

What if you woke up one day and you’re 33 years old? When you went to sleep the night before, you were sixty five.  Only something’s gone wrong in the time travel process, and you’ve lost your mem­o­ries of the future, lost  every­thing except for that con­fi­dence.  You are left with the unde­ni­able feel­ing that things will work out.  The rock-​​solid cer­tainty that you will make it through what­ever chal­lenges present them­selves.  This time, you really get to pay attention.

That didn’t hap­pen to me.

But I’m going to pre­tend it did. 

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Tags: confidence, personal, time travel