Cafe Hitch-hike

2021-12-15

Lessons learned from alternative realities changed by time travel

I've been enjoying science fiction more than usual, and I've been watching shows about time travel, alternate realities with possibilities, and then some. People often travel through time to change things, and well, it changes things too much or ways unintended. I think I have some initial takes from what I've watched:

1. The more we try to tamper with a timeline and change the outcome, the more fouled up it gets. It's like a Catalan series I watched, 'If I Hadn't Met You.' Things make less sense, and things turn out less than ideal than what was hoped.

Hmm, let's just say the timeline of my life was altered to where my birth father stayed with my mother. I then wake up to having both parents in my life. Then, I discover my life isn't what it was at all. I don't go to college and travel and toil, but instead, he takes great care of me. He is also a drug lord and I became his cappo because of my wiles. He still dies of natural causes at age 37, and then I take the helm eventually. Me as a drug baroness? Having constant security, paranoia, and living a very violent life? Whoa.

1a. It's a bitch to try to get out of the alternative timeline created when someone tried to go back to the one they were born in.

Now let's just say I decided I didn't want to become a drug baroness, I fully accept not having my birth father in my life, and want to go back to current life. I make more messes with trying to get back to my current life, and end up hurting more people. Or, I get so fucking lost in the time-space continuum that I go crazy. Not cool.

2. If you try to erase something from memory, it is so going to spring forward like an inflated ball submerged in water, like the movie 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.'

I could wish that I never remembered the career disaster called my internship, and I am able to do something that erases those dreadful 8 months and then the next 4 months to get back on my feet. Then, I'd scramble to recover those memories. Why? I met 3 of my best friends during that time. I had my second international trip where I enjoyed one brilliant Christmas and New Years. I was also in love during that time. Then, if I erased the 4 months of recovery, I'd discover I feel weaker because I didn't have those months to work hard to make a new normal. What would I then do? Scramble to get back the strength I lost from that experience and try another timeline tampering measure? Hmm...

3. The more we try to 'fix' something smaller, even within a current or alternative timeline, the more we again mess it up and make a bigger or worse problem.

I used to wish I never met D, someone I fell for back when I lived in my former college town. We met in a fellowship. Let's say the timeline is changed so I avoid him and we don't meet. Instead, he dated someone else in our group. In my current and real timeline, he broke my heart when he decided to move out of state and it abruptly ended. In the alternative, he dated someone else and she was so devastated by his leaving and breakup that she fell into an addiction or worse. At least I eventually got over that relationship and moved on where in the alternative timeline, she didn't or couldn't.

3a. We go back in time to change something, and then decide we want to change more things. It's like the show 'Dark' (which I nicknamed, 'Germans Running Through The Woods and Caves Over and Over Again').

We just can't leave well enough alone. So in the alternative timeline with D, I sidestep meeting him. While I'm there, I decided to try to get back with Posada, someone I dated before him. I do date Posada and it's one big mess that takes years of attempted fixes, and the relationship is a series of tribulations. (In real life, I later learned Posada had a lot of big troubles).

4. Even if something turned out less than ideal or was awful in the current reality, maybe there were many redeeming things about it. Maybe it's best to just let things be.

I had a boyfriend when I was 16, and he was 5 years older than me. He was a lot more experienced than me and wanted me to give more (physically and emotionally) than what I was comfortable with, and he was also very possessive and jealous. However, I became great friends with his family. He and they were extremely supportive of my ambitions and believed in me. Strangely, T. also provided a lot of direction along with other friends I had and I when I looked back, our relationship was a buffer during an extremely turbulent time in my life.

5. We can have an alternative timeline have exactly what we want, yet we'll still miss something significant (and we want to get that since we just can't leave well enough alone).

Jens Copperas (a high school sweetheart) and I fell brilliantly in love and got married after college. We have a good life together and I end up living in his home country. Although those things are wonderful, I end up living with a quiet, undefined emptiness despite the joyful life we have and sometimes feel my life became awfully vanilla.

6. We travel through time to change things so a loved one doesn't suffer. We usually hurt ourselves or someone else even worse than the initial wound.

(I had a scenario written for this but deleted it; I don't want to change a situation of real suffering to something larger, more intense, and affecting more people).

Then this leads me to the final conclusion:

7. Even if we time travel, don't want to change anything and just want to see what could had been, don't. It usually doesn't do much good.

Why? Because accidents happen. Even if we don't change anything, you know we'll unknowingly do something that shakes things up.

Moral of the story: don't time travel to change things unless we're comfortable with living with change we can't live with. Or, approach it with a Vulcan-like sense of nonattachment. I'm not sure that's possible, and maybe we wouldn't want to change something if we weren't overly attached to it.

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