everything has a purpose in life
having a purpose and meaning in life
time travel
we need to experience the good and the bad
would you really want to go back in time especiall
If Time Travel Really Was Possible...Would You Really Want To???
By pyewacket
@pyewacket (43903)
United States
September 21, 2008 5:56am CST
I just finished watching the 2002 version of The Time Machine based of course on the book by H.G. Wells. This isn't of course the first version movie of his book. I had loved both the earlier and newer versions of both movies.
Being the science geek all my life I can't help wondering...like wow, wouldn't it be great, if time travel really was possible. We could go back into the past to our favorite times in history and get a real perspective of what life was really like, say in Ancient Egypt, Greece, Roman, Medieval, or Renaissance times. We could experience first hand the Revolutionary times of a young American or the Civil War times (periods of history by the way I've always been fascinated by).
Or maybe you would like to travel to the future...how is our Earth say in the year 2136?..Is there an Earth? Or have we blown ourselves to smithereens due to petty hatreds due to race, religion and so forth?...Is the human species still here?..how much have we changed..are we are a more loving, caring, compassionate species? Does war still exist? The petty intolerances and hatreds...do they still exist? Or have we finally come to an understanding that the Earth is the only planet we know and therefore we have a more loving compassion for all living things and have a humble respect for everything in our world?
Or maybe you don't want to get so grandiose...maybe you would like to travel back in time and right the wrongs in your own life...the detours, the setbacks, the pain and misery you may have gone through. Would you want to go back in time and try to change that...so you wouldn't have to go through that pain, fear, anger, misery in your life? They (whoever they are) say there are no accidents in life, that everything happens in life in general for a reason and if we didn't go through those experiences we wouldn't grow, know, learn. In other words, our greatest teacher in life is precisely through our mistakes, our setbacks, our detours. So with that in mind....would you really then want to change the past?
What is the saying? If we don't learn from the past, we are condemned to repeat the past....So have we learned?
With this heavy duty thought in mind...if time travel were really possible.. and you could especially travel through the past into your own life, with the knowledge of what period in your life went really wrong and wanted to change it...would you? Do you think you would be a better person for it? Or do you see that everything in your life had a reason behind it? And there was some purpose for it?
11 people like this
36 responses
@grandpa_lash (5225)
• Australia
1 Nov 08
I would initially want to go forward in time, and find an era when we have learned how to rejuvenate humans. Then I would spend several years learnign a whole batch of skills I don't now have, and memorising some important facts and figues (like the winners of all the major races in Australian racing history lol).
Then I would like to go back to 1951 in Sydney, Australia, and use my knowledge of the races to make the money I need to set up a quiet utopian commune and co-operative industries and businesses, where I would train people in the skills I had learned and hopefully inspire them to creating an equally utopian society. I would keep them under the radar, place them in public service jobs, the military, universities, all forms of public life, and have them recruit new members until by 2000 there is a large core group of dedicated people of all age cohorts, some in positions of significant power and influence, with major financial and business resources and research facilities, and then come out of 'hiding' and set about creating my utopia.
The 'under the radar' bit has two purposes, firstly not to affect the flow of time too directly, and secondly to avoid opposition as far as possible.
One of my favourite fantasies.
Lash
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Nov 08
I wouldn't mind going far into the future either...I'd be curious if people had a better understanding of one another and no more hatreds, prejudices or wars, and while you would like to know if we can rejuvenate people, I'd like to see if mankind had figured a way of rejuvenating or healing the planet
1 person likes this
@grandpa_lash (5225)
• Australia
1 Nov 08
Ah, the rejuvenation of the environment would be the larger part of the utopian society I would be trying to create.
Bah, I just realised the paradoxes never end in thinking about time travel. If my utopian socity changed the course of history, my rejuvenation might come unstuck, and turn me instantly into powdered bone. Unless time travel is an integral part of parallel universes.
Lash
1 person likes this
@Lakota12 (42600)
• United States
21 Sep 08
hmmmm this is a thinker.
Only thing in my life I would want to change is to have had an earlier warning that hubby had cancer and that we could have got him cured of it before it was to late. FOr when we found out it couldnt even be opeated on and if we knew more could have got to it earlier and maybe got that operation and he wold be with me today.
Then I would like to go back in the old western days. and take back my ways I do now.
I wouldnt be a cowtoe wife.
and I wouldnt be treated like I had no brain.
SOme of the western women. acted like they just didnt know what to do except to be ordered around by the husband even got whipped.
SOme how I would have liked to changed all that earlier than what they did.
2 people like this
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@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
30 Sep 08
You have a very valid reason to want to go back into time...to help your hubby. I think we all have that sense of "Oh, if I only knew then.. " kind of thoughts there
1 person likes this
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@highflyingxangel (9225)
• United States
27 Sep 08
I think if I went back in time I'd like to go back and maybe see what would happened if I had changed how certain things had worked out. I don't think I'd mind seeing what life was like during other time periods either. I'd be afraid of changing something by going back in time then though and really messing things up. I'm not sure I could handle that weight on my shoulders knowing I ended up messing up how the future was supposed to turn out.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
31 Oct 08
Yes that might be a danger there of changing some event of the past that might make future events worse. I guess things are meant to happen the way they do for a reason whether good or bad.
1 person likes this
@Aussies2007 (5336)
• Australia
21 Sep 08
I have both of those movies.
The first one on video and the second one on DVD.
Since watching the first one... many years ago...
I always loved the idea at the end of the movie... where he goes back to the future to re-teach the knowledge they have lost. That would be me. I would love to be the teacher.
But as far as going back in the past... no thank you.
The past is a nasty place... where most people were slaves.
I would not mind experiencing being 18 in 1958...
It did sound like a fun time. "Happy Days" comes into mind.
But then again... I only want to go there for the music.
My parents were 30 at that time... and they were not having any fun.
No... for me... it is the future...
Not the future on Earth... because I already know that it will suck here.
But the future on another planet.
The truth is out there...
And if an UFO wants to abduct me... I am willing to go... lol
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
21 Sep 08
I hear ya. I would in no way what to go back to my own past...even to right the "wrongs" in my life...like I said I can't help thinking everything in my life had some purpose...just trying to figure out what. I'm with you about zooming up to the future and yes, some other world or planet...never felt I belonged to this one that's for sure.
Mmm...yup if a UFO came and wanted to take me...I'll go..(think of the music from Close Encounters...I now have an "earworm" for that)
Uh for your enjoyment
The classic theme from Close Encounters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUcOaGawIW0
Hope you can hear and see it..since I know you're on dial up..if not hum it..LOL
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1 person likes this
@Aussies2007 (5336)
• Australia
21 Sep 08
I have that movie as well... a classic..
2 people like this
@ElicBxn (63233)
• United States
21 Sep 08
IF I could read Latin or Greek, I might go back then - tho the way they treated women would be a PITA!
I would probably be more interested in going forward - science fiction fan that I am.
I would love to travel really far back, but since I'm really REALLY bad at languages I would be kind of stuck for communicating.
I don't have the "Time Lord" gift of languages!
2 people like this
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@ElicBxn (63233)
• United States
21 Sep 08
I suspect that language will change less in a couple of hundred years because of the mass communication than it has in the past. I also figure that just as we have some people that can speak Greek and Latin, there will be some who can speak English.
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
21 Sep 08
Wonder if there would be a whole new barrage of languages in the future?? ![](/Content/images/emotes/confused.gif)
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@katkat (2378)
• Philippines
30 Sep 08
I have watched those movies so many times that I have fancied the idea of time travel my self. If it is possible I would certainly want to time travel. I would choose to go back in my past days. I would pick my elementary days. Those days are the most memorable and happy ones for me. I want to experience it all over again. It was perfect for me then. But if I would want to correct my mistake and make my life different from now I would choose my college days. There’s so many bad decisions that I done and I would want to correct it. There’s so many things that happened to me during college days that I some of it I want to experience all over again and some, especially the bad ones’ I want to correct it.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
31 Oct 08
I wouldn't mind going back and correcting some of my wrong decisions in life either, but who knows maybe even the bad decisions I made were meant for a reason..right?
1 person likes this
@ronaldinu (12422)
• Malta
21 Sep 08
If I had the opportunity to travel in time I would go back to the year 1565 the year of the great siege of Malta. Malta was invaded by the Turks and managed to stand still with the help of the Knights of St. John and the Maltese people. I would be glad to see how things really went and perhaps being able to take part in the siege.
I would also like to go back to change a decision or two in my own life. Perhaps I would go back when I entered university. I would prefer going into computers since they are today's most means of a good income.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
22 Sep 08
Mmm...I thing one fascinating place to travel back in time is right here in America....I'm part Native American and I would love to have seen how America looked prior to the uh....invasion..LOL. No skyscrapers, no concrete roads or sidewalks...just beautiful wilderness
@twoey68 (13627)
• United States
27 Sep 08
Would I want to travel back in time...yes, to see different periods, perhaps see relatives that had passed on long before my time. Would I want to change things in my past...as tempting as that sounds, like you said everything happens for a reason. Say, I changed things and didn't marry my first husband at 16, I wouldn't have moved back with my Mom or back up North, I wouldn't have been there for my younger brothers or to help out my Mom...who's to say where they may have ended up or where I would have ended up...it could turn out that I would have never met my Hubby. There's millions of things that change when you think about tampering with the past...it's nice to think about correcting our mistakes but then who's to say how it would turn out.
[b]**AT PEACE WITHIN**
~~STAND STRONG IN YOUR BELIEFS~~ [/b]
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
31 Oct 08
That would be nice to "visit" distant relatives and get a glimpse of what their lives were really like. Would love that with my great-grandmother and maybe her mother's time which was around the Civil War period. Maybe you're right, though, by going back into our own time and try to "fix" things, who knows? Might have made things worse instead of better
@ldybgsgma99 (798)
• United States
21 Sep 08
If I could travel back in time, I would take my daughter to meet her dad so she could see what a wonderful person he was. He was killed in a motorcycle accident when she was only 13 months old. All she knows of him are the things I have told her. That would be the only reason I would want to time travel. You can't change the past and the future is what you make it so I am happy where I am. Uniting my daughter with her dad would be the only thing I would want to do.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
30 Sep 08
That sounds like a very admirable reason to want to go back into time. I never knew my father either, though it was because my parents got divorced when I was very young..by the time I did get reconnected with my father's side of the family I found out he had passed away some years prior
@BarBaraPrz (45433)
• St. Catharines, Ontario
21 Sep 08
I, too, have wondered about this, but how far back should I go in my own life to change things? Do I go back to when I was married and not agree to divorce but insist on working things out? Do I go back a bit further and not get married at all? Maybe I should go all the way back to Grade Six and agree to go to my local (right behind my house!) Junior High instead of the one a bus ride away with the "enrichment" program? And would it really change anything?
On the other hand, to be able to go back for a visit, as I am now, to any one of the many happy Sunday afternoons of my childhood, when the whole extended family would gather at my grandparents... to see my dear dad, grandfather and uncles playing cards under one of the spreading birch trees... or sit in on any of the conversations the womenfolk were having, that I always got shooed away from, find out just what the big deal was...
1 person likes this
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@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
30 Sep 08
If I could go all the way back in my own time think I would go back to the day I was born and try and communicate to the nurses that I want to be switched at birth and given to another family...I sure as hell didn't belong to the family I was raised in.![](/Content/images/emotes/rasp.gif)
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@irishmist (3814)
• United States
21 Sep 08
As interesting as it seems I don't think I would want to do the time travel thing, as I have a hard enough time with what is going on now in my life.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
30 Sep 08
Mmmm...how true..now if there was only a way to get MORE time in one's life each day...![](/Content/images/emotes/lol.gif)
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@gemini_rose (16264)
•
21 Sep 08
I am not sure, but I know for a fact that I would give it a try. I would want to go back to the age of 12 or 13, because it was at the age of 14 or 15 that things started to go wrong for me so I would go back and change it yes. I think that I would be a better person for it and although I do think that everything happens for a reason I think that mine has happened not for reasons but because of me and there is a lot I would change, at this stage of my life I cannot really see a purpose for the way things turned out!
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
30 Sep 08
Believe me I often wondered why the different things happened to me in my life and I had the detours and setbacks I've had....but maybe there really was a purpose and reason for them....just don't know what though...
@eagle_f15 (1827)
• Malaysia
21 Sep 08
Would definitely like to go back to bible times in the old testament!!![](/Content/images/emotes/lol.gif)
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2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
30 Sep 08
Mmmm....I wouldn't mind going back to the ancient Egyptian times.
@worldbestwriter2008 (1633)
• Philippines
21 Sep 08
If there would a travel machine i wish to travel back dated June 27, 1914..It was when the world war begun. I would like to see and feel what's they feel, how they felt and the pains in their heart. But I'm not wishing to get hurt. I just want to visit those time. But i still want to be born on this modern periods. My ultimate purpose to witness the event, what's behind it so that i could shape my future to the better. I also want to witness the registration of the church called the "Church of Christ" it was of the same date too. June 27, 1914. I want to see the young face of the person Brother Felix Y. Manalo as he officially registered the Church. That's all i could say right now..
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
30 Sep 08
Wow, you're very specific on the date you want to go back in time to. Mine would be more generalized....like going back to Ancient Egyptian times or the Medieval or Renaissance periods.
@worldwise1 (14885)
• United States
30 Sep 08
I'm almost ashamed to admit it, pyewacket, but, yes, I would go back and change things in my life in a heartbeat. My reasons are that I grew up in an unusual situation where I had very little choice. I would not trade my happy childhood for anything, but I would begin starting around puberty. Prior to that time I had a very romanticized picture of what to expect from life. My aunt and uncle(as much as I dearly loved them), had no idea of how to relate to a budding teenaged girl. Suffice it to say that my life was very tempestuous during those years. It took many years for me to come to terms with my real mother because I always felt that she should have come to my rescue when I truly needed her the most.
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
31 Oct 08
LOL--in many ways I can relate. Even though I was raised by grandmother and mother, I don't think they knew how to "handle" me as my personality was so diametrically different from theirs..My mother especially didn't know HOW to be a mother as it took me many years to realize that in some ways I was more the mother and my mother the child...
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
31 Oct 08
I used to LOVE that series. One of the best around about time travel
@Pose123 (21635)
• Canada
22 Sep 08
Hi pyewacket, A great discussion by he way. I haven't seen the movie but I've often thought about time travel and I've heard of some people who claim to have experienced it quite by accident. There doesn't appear to be anyone who can do it at will, but things have happened to people that they can't explain. As for changing things that I've experienced, I would not want to do that. I believe that there is a plan for each of us, and no matter what our situation, there is a reason and a purpose behind it. Also if we were to change our past, just think of how many others would be affected. I often think that reincarnation is true and that is why we are fascinated with certain periods in history. Life itself is all a great mystery, maybe we just haven't discovered time travel yet. Blessings.
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
30 Sep 08
I think what you may be thinking about is maybe past life regression? Sort of sounds like it, where a person can go back into their past lives. I still wouldn't mind going back into my own past and maybe make better choices than I did...it might have helped me to have been a success in life sooner...I'm still going for that goal.
@cortjo73 (6498)
• United States
27 Sep 08
It would be interesting to go back to prehistoric times and see the dinosaurs with my own two eyes.
As for me...I would and I wouldn't want to go back in time of my own personal history and change wrongs to make them right. But, you are right. We learn from our mistakes. It is all a part of being human. Regrets, wrongs, lessons learned keep us grounded. Without them, our egos would get out of control. We may think we are perfect and without mistakes. So, I don't think it would be a good thing to go back to fix what was once broken.
This was a really good question.
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
31 Oct 08
Be careful if you ever do manage to go back into time of the dinosaurs...you just might become lunch..LOL![](/Content/images/emotes/rasp.gif)
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1 person likes this
@Vladilyich1 (1454)
• Canada
22 Sep 08
Mathematically, it is possible using string theory and Schwarszchild geometry.
The problem is, though, avoiding creating a paradox (See the movie "Millennium" with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd).
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
31 Oct 08
LOL--yes there could be strange paradoxes about time travel Can't remember if I saw Millennium...sounds familiar though
@jorjh_and1 (83)
• Romania
12 Oct 08
It would probably be fun to change my past, but that could seriously mess up my future.
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
31 Oct 08
Yes one sometimes wonders if interfering and changing one's past might make one's future even worse.
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