The Sands of Time

If you could go back and change your past, or prevent yourself from doing something that you regret, would you do it?  More important than that, is the question: would you want to remember what you changed?

Consider for a moment that you had the power to travel back and forward along your own timeline, turning or returning to any given point in your life, retaining all memories that you have.  Now if you jumped back to say 10 years ago and you remembered everything that you had experienced and could change whatever you want, let's assume that you change something.  Would you want to remember what you change, and everything from that point onward in your life that you "already" experienced, or would you want it to sever the connection to your old timeline, leaving you back in that moment, with the event changed but only with the memories to that moment.

Here's an example, let's say you were hurt by someone you met 9 years ago and you regretted meeting them and all that you came to experience.  You have the chance to go back to the point in your life 10 years ago.  You can make a change in your life that ultimately means that you will never meet them.  So you make that change.  Would you want to remember everything you had experienced, or would you want your life to be "reset" to that moment, effectively writing off the 10 years you had experienced and all recollection.

Would you choose to remember or would you choose to forget?

I'm not really interested if you would choose to forget, what I am interested in is those who say they would choose to remember, because to me, if you choose to remember it, then it still happened.  If you choose to forget, then no-one will remember it, and you have the possibility that history could repeat itself.  Choosing to forget is in effect rewriting history, it is as if it never happened.  Whereas if you choose to remember, you are only really making a change in your life - albeit one in the past that has far reaching consequences but it's still on the face of it only a change in your life, as if it was a change you made in the present not undoing anything just taking a new outlook on life.

I guess the question is, for those who would long to go back and change something in their past, if you would choose to remember it, what's the difference between going back in time, or just accepting your past in the present and moving on?  Is it the want to recover lost years of your life?  Or maybe it's not the fact that you forget or remember it, rather it's that you want the other person forget?

Time fascinates me, and the possibility of time travel is something that throws up many questions I like to contemplate.  Some of these questions though often bring about a realisation of the present more than the possibilities for the future or the memories of the past.