Life-Moment Mulligans

I wish I had a time machine and could go back in time and change certain things that I did, or said.

I know, I know, anyone who has even the smallest exposure to Science Fiction knows that going back in time and changing things is fraught with issues - the main one being, if you went back in time and changed something then the reason you had to go back in time is eliminated thereby making it unnecessary for your present self to go back into time in the first place. Ok, Time Paradoxes aside, there are still things that I would like to change, if it were possible.

I know I am not alone in having this wish, I am almost certain that everyone has such thoughts and past regrets – the "if onlys" that haunt us.

I have to admit, I have been watching a show on CBC called "Being Erica" which I think is contributing to my desire to have a “Life-Moment Mulligan”. Erica is a thirty-something woman who is single and without much direction in her life (I draw no parallels there, ahem.) and she blames her lack of direction on things that happened (or failed to happen) in the past. She meets a mysterious man called "Dr. Tom" who gets her to write down all her past regrets and then sends her back in time in each episode to re-write the past as it were.

Invariably, Erica's re-writing of the past doesn't have the intended outcome, instead she learns to put the past in a different context and that it's not as much about what we have done in the past, but how we deal with it in the present; what we learn from the experience and what we do in the here and now to prevent having a similar regret later in life.

I guess regrets are natural, just part of life. I know for some, there probably is a watershed moment – a definitive point in time where their life did alter irrevocably, but I think for most of us, it’s just a series of small course changes that we consciously or unconsciously navigate on our way through life. Sometimes, we look back on the course change and wish we’d gone left instead of right; but all we can do now is reset our sails and alter our course in the best direction we can find and hope for the best.

I think I have learned from most of my regrets, but I still catch myself from time to time wishing for a Life-Moment Mulligan to erase the regret from the board.

I guess the lesson I still need to learn is how to accept the “mistakes” I’ve made and let go of past regrets – maybe I could go back in time and teach my younger self that lesson – you see, I still think it would be fun to have a time machine – time paradoxes be damned.