Living in the past

[cmdr_zoom]

I have long had a personal fantasy of time travel - of visiting my teenaged self and imparting on him (from a sympathetic and reliable source) certain life lessons and warnings of potential missteps without the need for him to go through them himself, thus giving him a head start and perhaps engineering for myself (or an alternate self, at least) a "better" present. And perhaps while I was in the neighborhood, so to speak, I might also mail some anonymous packages to NASA and the FBI regarding the shuttle program and some hijackers.

Of late, however, I've noticed a shift of focus. Now my thoughts tend to be of mental rather than physical time travel - of replacing my previous consciousness. Partly to make some different choices, yes, but also simply for a second chance to experience (and document) my youth with a fuller appreciation of those events.

I am well aware of the irony and risk that such thoughts, in turn, may distract me from such an appreciation of the time in which I live now, and may someday look back on with similar feeling.

Comments

[seawasp]

I always run into the brick wall with that fantasy of the fact that imparting any actually useful info would almost certainly transform the world so that after a few years it wouldn't be THIS world.

I'd love to go back in time and tell me to invest a thousand or more into WotC, and that would PROBABLY work out all right, but would I still be married, would I have these kids? Would I be a published author? Who knows.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

after a few years it wouldn't be THIS world.

... and I'm okay with that. :/

(My greater concern involves the axiom that the only secret worth keeping is that something is possible. Solid evidence of time travel would likely cause certain groups to begin taking extraordinary measures to find out how.)

[pjack.livejournal.com]

after a few years it wouldn't be THIS world.

... and I'm okay with that. :/

Making it entirely possible that you will completely erase from existence anyone who has been born within the last twenty-odd years or so. Oh, sure, children will still be born, just not the same children...

...But that's a derail into story-building, "what if" territory. Which I love to do, but has nothing to do with the going-back-and-changing-things fantasy. Which I also have. Among others too embarrassing to share here. :)

[caluche.livejournal.com]

I suspect pretty much everyone has some variant of this fantasy at some point or another. I usually have this kind of fantasy in the sort of down times of my life, but I've also noticed that at least so far, riding out the bad times leads to better times. Also, I remember those times as sort of an information dark ages. I had to go to the library to read. I couldn't wake up in the middle of the night wondering about some random topic and then without even moving from my bed read half a dozen thesis papers. I'm in the middle of Afghanistan and I can read new fiction novels just about as soon as they're published. I keep a day to day dialogue with friends worldwide. I think it'd be a horrible culture shock to find myself in my 10 year old body back in 1981.

[meagenimage.livejournal.com]

When I was about 12 I wondered about the opposite situation: what would I do if a strange but familiar adult came up to me and insisted they are me from the future?

Sadly, I didn't know anything about the future *or* what it means to be older, so I could never get a very clear mental image of the conversation.