Time travel, the paradoxes of choices…

These are the topics that frequently flood my mind and animate many a conversation with my brother. It’s not because I strongly desire to go back and change anything, but more so because it’s sort of made its way into a lot of our most popular media today (The Flash, Mr. Nobody, etc.).

But, there are moments, that I’m sure everyone experiences, where I sit and imagine how certain situations could have turned out differently had I done something in another way or not done anything at all rather…

At the moment there is only one thing that I care to share that I think I might have wanted to change had I known some of the strife that it would cause: my parents’ marriage.
After two separations and some of the worst arguments, I’m glad it’s over. However, when I was younger and only beginning to understand my parents better, and subsequently becoming more confused, and simple yet complicated truths about their relationship and personalities were slowly being revealed to my adolescent mind, it was definitely painful.

If I could time travel, I would go back to around the time when they first met. I would get to know my mom. She was apparently the most beautiful, and also “most unattainable.” My dad was like the popular, “everybody’s guy.” I’d try and understand how such a strong woman who looked down on conformity would later use the “I-only-stayed-in-it-because-of-society” excuse.

I would also want to understand how my dad, who was also known as an indecisive player who wouldn’t settle down, fell head over heels, losing himself in the process of trying to please my mom.

I guess I’d give them some advice? Not that I know much about relationships anyway, but I do know that communication is key. Maybe then if they’d met they would better communicate their thoughts and feelings. And, then we could have that picture-perfect family with two parents who stayed together till death do they part.

If I were to consider the butterfly-effect, then one of two (actually, there are infinite possibilities) things could happen.

Ideally, the two of them have a better relationship and our family life is 100%. Or, because they have this new understanding that I had imparted upon them back when they were in university, they either never even find each other appealing or they realise early on that their relationship cannot work. I feel like this scenario is an example of how the butterfly-effect can be a proponent of fate ultimately playing out. Fate, being that they should not be together. Of course, this would mean that my brother and I would no longer exist, or maybe just my brother, depending on how things would play out.

Finally, without the butterfly-effect, the advice I would have given them would probably have fallen on deaf ears (‘deaf’ because of space-time continuum reasons) since any change that I would try to make wouldn’t change the order of how things should happen anyway. I probably just added a parentheses in our combined narrative – soon to be forgotten.
So, as it stands, it’s fun to ponder all the scenarios and imagine a time when your parents existed before you. But, like Samantha explained to Carrie in Sex and the City, you can’t bother yourself with the “coulda, woulda, shoulda.”

After all, if none of it had happened, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing this, and I think that’s good enough reason to keep focused on the now.

—By Déna J., 18, Kimberley