An Unappealing Prospect

This is similar to a recent daily prompt but supersized to ask about a whole year. So, let’s look at the concept in detail to examine how flawed it actually is.

There are three possibilities. One, you relive it from the inside as it happened only with the knowledge of what happens afterwards. How bad would that be? You could see your mistakes, know what they lead to but be compelled to make those mistakes once more. It would be like a horror story. Whichever year you were forced to relive you would see so many stupid decisions and so many difficulties that you created for yourself or that others created for you. It would be like watching a slow motion car crash.

Two, you relive it but you have the opportunity to change what you did. OK, that’s superficially appealing, but what do you change and how do you change it? You could change something short term that has a massive long term impact because you didn’t think it through properly. You could come back to the modern day and find that it’s completely changed. Read the Butterfly Effect short story to see how that works or watch Back to the Future! You could end up completely ruining what you have.

Three, you relive it as a spectator. You just watch it unfold from the outside this time. Again, you can’t change anything and you have to watch all the mistakes and all the arguments and problems without being able to do anything about them. It would be the world’s most frustrating film!

On balance it’s far better to live life forwards. I will leave the dangerous or sterile or maddening process of reliving your life to others!