It seems that there are a lot of people who believe in time travel. I used to be one of those.

Unfortunately, too many of us swim in regrets. We wish things would have been different, that someone had treated us better or that we did (or didn’t) do that “thing”.

I can remember the day when regrets seemed to vanish from my way of thinking. Prior to that day, there were many times I wished for things to be different in my past.

In my second year of post-secondary, I dropped my English class. This gave me one course less than a full load of subjects. Many classmates with lower averages than I did got into medical school the following year, but I did not. I didn’t have 2 full years of post-secondary completed. If only I didn’t drop that course…

From far away, I drooled over many girls in school. That radiant beauty in the black skirt I would watch almost daily as she left school. That tall brunette in Red Deer College who attracted me and petrified me all at the same time. If only I had asked one of them out…

I dropped out of grade 10 four times. Skipping classes, slowly sinking into a world of sheer solitude, making friends with people within my imagination who came too easily when I was stoned. I never graduated from high school. If only I applied myself…

I quit drinking a hundred times or more during my 20’s and 30’s. Many times I promised myself that this was going to be the last case of beer I will drink. I would make sure I drank it all that evening so there will be nothing to drink in the morning – in full support of my will to quit tomorrow. So why am I at the beer store again…

The list goes on. So many things that would swirl around in my head, pulling me to fantasize how my life would have been so much better.

But then the day arrived when my mindset shifted almost immediately. It was on that day that the mere idea of regrets seemed ridiculous for two reasons.

First, I did not have a rewind button. I could not simply hit that non-existent switch and revert back to a time of my choosing. Yearning for something to be different meant I was burning energy on something that was absolutely impossible to do.

Second, even I could change something, the ripple effect would be uncertain. Some people refer to this as the “butterfly effect”. Suppose I could hit rewind and change something and let’s say I changed two things: I quit drinking in my mid 20’s and I didn’t drop that English class. Maybe I could have become a doctor, maybe even a specialist. Just as possible, with access to various medications coupled with a predisposition to addictions, I could have become hooked on some drugs that could have caused untold damage. Fast forward to today, my life would be so far different than it is right now – good, bad or otherwise. The key point is that my life would be unlike it is now. People in my life would be different, I would not have met Sue and I would not have my family.

The day that changed me forever was the day my son was born. Almost instantly he became a part of all timelines in my life – like he was always there. His arrival also brought me the glaring realization that I would not trade him in for anything. Since I was completely unwilling to change him being there with me, why would I want to alter anything in my past that would risk losing this little boy, only hours old?

That was the last day I dwelt on regrets. I still have momentary second guesses – like, maybe I really didn’t need that last slice of pizza. I also have done things that I am not proud of (topics for future blog posts), but there are no regrets.

I do not judge anyone who is weighed down by regrets, but for those folks, I have two questions: (1) As you look around your life, who and what would you miss if you changed something way back when? And, (2) Do you have a magic rewind button to send you back to yesterday?

For me, I think I’ll pass on the time-travel train with the regrets engineer at the helm. I like where I have arrived.