If I Could Go Back in Time...

Of all the futile exercises I indulge in periodically, this one is my favorite: I try to map the points in time, where I could go back – with my current knowledge of how things eventually turned out, and do things differently, and see how my life is affected by it. Clearly, I don’t think my life turned out all that well. I know being content with one’s reality is aspirational, but it has never been something I flourished at. So every other day, I think about which pivotal point in time I could go back to and change something so that I would be in a different place in life. So far, I haven’t been able to find that one point that could set everything on the right course. Let me illustrate my point with a few examples.

Back in seventh grade, I moved to a posh new school and when formulas and molecule balancing were being taught, I didn’t understand the concept – this ensured that I would never get a hang of chemistry and kept living in terror of the chemistry exams till twelfth grade, after which I dropped science altogether. In fact, I could have gone for engineering but it was the compulsory chemistry paper that I was terrified of, and decided that was not the path for me. Maybe I could go back and raise my hand and pester Nupur ma’am to explain the concepts better to me back in the seventh grade. That could have set me on a different path. The rest of the science subjects fascinated me. Eventually, if I had chosen engineering as a field of study, I would not have been shamed by an ex about my career prospects which could have boosted my self-esteem and made sure that I didn’t feel like a failure constantly today.

Alternatively, I could have chosen to join Kendriya Vidyalaya instead of St. Joseph’s Convent in seventh grade. Maybe I would have met different people there – eliminating the ex from the picture altogether. So, without her, there would be no one to shame me about my career prospects. Maybe I would have scored better in CBSE than I did in the ICSE curriculum. There are a lot of unknown variables there. Another past choice I would have loved to change was choosing to pursue Hotel Management instead of going for a degree in English from EFLU Hyderabad. I always wanted to write, and I always loved reading but I was scared that if it became coursework, I might not enjoy it as much. A cousin of mine actually went that route and today, she is a research fellow at Cambridge. Maybe that’s what an alternate version of me could be doing. 

A more recent point in time where I could change things would have been in 2011, when after several months of physiotherapy due to a prolapsed disc, I decided not to join back into the hotel industry since I deemed it too hectic for my temperament. My ensuing career in retail and sales had its ups and downs and I don’t regret any of it, but leaving the hotel industry meant I could not apply for a teaching job at any IHMs that need a mandatory two years of industry experience. I believe I could have been a great lecturer, doing a better job than some of my old teachers did. It would have been a stable job with decent pay, something that didn’t stress me out as much as my corporate jobs ended up doing. The possibilities are endless.

I could go back to 1997 and expose the caretaker who was abusing me – thus putting an end to the three years of torture that scarred me in more ways than one. Maybe that would have made my father weary of the place where we were, maybe he would have moved. If he moved, maybe he would not have met the doctor who prescribed the wrong medications that led to his kidney failure and he would still be alive. Sometimes I feel like my father’s ultimate demise was a result of marrying my mother – the failed marriage sent him into a spiral of self-loathing fuelled by rejection which he never recovered from – I am not sure which point in time I could go back to so that I could change that. Also, if my parents had not married, I wouldn’t exist. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I have got to watch these thoughts!

I could go back to the times when I did things I regretted in life later – the time I cheated on my first girlfriend. Although, then I wouldn’t have met this amazing girl I ended up dating for several years later in life. Maybe I could have treated her better later in life – that would have prevented an impulsive decision I made in 2014 and saved me several years of misery. Or maybe, I could have been nicer to my college girlfriend – not sure if that relationship had any future, but it would have saved me some regret. All these past indiscretions, the unkind words I spoke, and the questionable choices I made, I wish I could go back and undo – maybe then I would feel better about who I am today.

Now changing any of these things would of course change a lot of my reality – you know the classical problem with time travel. Could I afford to not experience the things that I did? The truth is that even the worst points in my life taught me quite a lot – they made me who I am today. Then what is the point of thinking about what I could change? These imaginary do-overs are just hypotheticals that help keep you sane while you shoulder the weight of your past decisions. My life seems great at the moment – things worked out in the end, but I am sure twenty years from now, there will be things I’d wish to travel back in time and change.