By Karla Pomeroy
Editor
Karla's Kolumn
Would you change history?
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If you could travel back in time would you? Where would you go? Back to what time?
Right now I bet we’re all thinking we’d go back a year or two and change who decided to run for president. We’re thinking what if the Republicans put up just one highly qualified, intelligent candidate instead of 19, and we’re thinking what if Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren hadn’t turned down the opportunity to run for the Democratic nomination. But that would take changing quite a bit of history.
I love time travel stories, whether in books, movies, TV shows, or my own mind. I like mulling over all the possibilities that time travel can bring. Of course, there’s the “Back To the Future” trilogy where even though history was altered, the future turned out better once they returned, except for maybe Biff. But those movies brought to light some of the ethical questions of time travel. Do you go back in time and make bets on sporting events because you already know the outcome?
What about running into yourself in the past? That brings up loads of space time continuum issues that can boggle the mind. Do you change your past in an attempt to affect your own future.
In these movies, as I said, everything turns out for the best in the future when the past is changed.
Of course, time travel and those movies are all fiction. As is Stephen King’s “11/22/63” where a man keeps going back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Spoiler alert: for those who haven’t read the book and want to, skip to the next paragraph. This book shows that things aren’t always better when we change the past and that it’s not always easy. It’s not just a matter of being in the book depository at the right time. So many things had to happen for Lee Harvey Oswald to be there, things in his life, the life of the president, and much more.
Is that what you would do if you could travel back in time? Try to prevent an assassination, change one of the major moments in U.S. history?
A new TV series on NBC “Timeless” is about time travel and while there’s several subplots, the gist is one group travels back in time to change history to affect the future and another group tries to stop them.
It makes for interesting TV as they’ve traveled back to the Hindenburg time, the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and next week it’s World War II.
Their main rule in the show, they can’t travel back in time where you were once alive, leaving out about the last 40 years.
With the uncertainty of how the world would change if you altered a major incident in history or would you go back in time to a moment in your own life, and warn yourself about a decision you’ve made, or about a deed you’ve done?
The thing about time travel though, is there’s so many unanswered questions and so many unknowns?
If I went back and changed one decision, would my life be altered slightly or drastically or not at all. Would I still end up as the editor of the Northern Wyoming Daily News and just take a different path to get here?
When I returned to the present and if my life was changed, would I remember the old life? Would I want to remember?
For me, until I read Stephen King’s book, I had thought of playing the hero and going back in time to stop the JFK or Lincoln assassinations. Now … I’d leave well enough alone. Even in my own life. I learned many years ago to be content where I’m at and who I am. The decisions I made, the people I have encountered, the experiences I’ve lived have all made me who I am today, and despite some readers not always appreciating who that is, I like who I am. I’m me, past, present and future, it’s just me.
With all these questions, it’s a good thing time travel is just fiction. Or is it? Are you reading this now? In the past? Or in the future?
