Past and Present

Do do-overs exists?

I am not talking about the ordinary kind of course, the "Hey I wrote that wrong, let me correct it" or "I forgot milk at the store - let me run back and get it.".  No, I am thinking of the "Peggy Sue Got Married" kind,  the big step back in time or space to have the chance to re-cast a significant decision.

I ask not so much from the need to step back and retake a particular decision (although is there not a decision we would all like to remake?) so much as reconsideration of the purpose of wisdom in our life and how we use it going forward.  It is an interesting conundrum:  we only gain experience as we move through life, but it is always most easily applied looking behind us to what has been.  It is far more difficult to apply what we have learned to what is coming up.

That is the great part of movies that take someone back.  They have the benefit of having lived through the impact of their decisions - both the good and the bad elements - and can carefully weigh whether a different course would be worth it.  They can apply what they have already learned to the decision that they could make again and theoretically evaluate if a different one would have been better.

It seldom is of course, at least in the movies, and the character always determines that the decision they made was the correct one even with all of the bumps in the road that may have occurred since them.  Is it fear of the unknown of the new decision?  Is it a realization that every decision results in good and bad things in our lives?  Or is it that they are simply using the wisdom that they gained to inform their decision to live with the choices that they have made?

There are, of course, no time-space continuum jumps that allow us to go back and remake the decisions of our lives - yet interestingly, there are countless opportunities which cleverly hide themselves as new incidents or decisions to be made but are in fact simply versions of the choices and incidents we have faced in our past.  These, then, are the true "do-over" situations that occur to us every day:  not that we go back in time to remake a decision, but that we have the opportunity to make a decision using the wisdom that we have gained. 

The question is, will we apply what we have learned in the here and now based on the past?  Or will we continue to think longingly of the day our lives changed because of a decision, never realizing that the past is present today?