Recently I have been dipping into two series that both involved time travel and it got me thinking about the large number of books, series, and movies that involve time travel directly, alternate timelines, or time loops. Stories often have a mixture of these when they change the past, whether accidental or intentional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can see some of these elements in Dicken\u2019s \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d, \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d, \u201cGroundhog\u2019s Day\u201d, \u201cBack to the Future\u201d series, \u201c12 Monkeys\u201d, \u201cThe Terminator,\u201d series, etc. What I was thinking about specifically is why the subject is so interesting and what draws us most to these stories?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are varied reasons that these plotlines, when done well, can be so compelling. For one, there is a fragility of events in our lives that could have gone otherwise. We have the intuition that we are not just acting out a scripted existence and so many details could have gone otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMen spoke much in my boyhood of restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it is a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.\u201d (G. K. Chesterton, \u201cOrthodoxy\u201d, \u201cIV The Ethics of Elfland\u201d)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It is also intellectually fun to play with time travel paradoxes, although why your poor grandfather might be the target of such paradoxes is another story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For me, the fascination with such plots is the idea of going back in time to prevent myself from taking trouble-filled paths in my life. I have day-dreamed about being able to tell my 18-year-old (or younger) self that most things I believed were false. Such a tempting daydream to remove all the wrinkles out of your lived experienced and thinking you would come out of this the person you want to be. This daydream would be endlessly recursive because there are things I would argue with my previous self just six months back in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem is you can end up in a recrimination time loop, always revisiting and lamenting your past actions. Even worse, if you are constantly blaming others, and that everything would be perfect otherwise. There is wisdom in knowing yourself, and even more reason when you realize how little you know yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other factor is discovering how our woundedness and the woundedness of others have shaped us. The meaning and role of suffering in our lives. As Peter Kreeft likes to note, \u201cRabbi Abraham Heschel says, \u2018The man who has never suffered\u2014what could he possibly know, anyway?\u2019\u201d I recently read Joseph Pearce\u2019s revised authorized biography of Solzhenitsyn, and this was something Solzhenitsyn came to realize and that his time in the gulag was transformative for him. He became thankful for this suffering as he reflected on how he had previously ignored the surrounding problems to prefer an ideology over the effects of that ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.\u201d Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Time travel related stories give us an \u201cif only\u201d to do a past patch up. Much harder is living in the present moment and learning from our past sins. As Catholics, to accept the forgiveness of our sins in the Sacrament of Confession. To spend too much time regretting the past and fretting the future gets us nowhere. We are called to love right now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.\u201d (G. K. Chesterton, \u201cThe Advantages of Having One Leg,\u201d Tremendous Trifles)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Another factor for me in this was today\u2019s First Reading at Mass:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
13<\/sup> Come now, you who say, \u201cToday or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit\u201d\u201414<\/sup> yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15<\/sup> Instead you ought to say, \u201cIf the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.\u201d 16<\/sup> As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17<\/sup> So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:13\u201317)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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