Agony and the Hope Transition

You know what agony is? It’s being inches from something you direly want and yet miles from ever calling it yours. It’s staring into the most beautiful pair of almond-shaped eyes only to see their gaze focused somewhere else. It’s experiencing the most pampering treatment everyday and yet longing for something simpler. It’s knowing that contentment and reality are two different things, a piece of knowledge you’ve acquired the hard way.

Funny how all those angsty rock songs seem to be singing the same tune.

On one hand, I have a chance to wind back the clock in one aspect of my life. Let's just say I got the chance to go back to a happier time and place. The other aspect remains an undeniable reality. Don’t get me wrong. I’m thankful for that rare chance. Though I wonder if the same opportunity will arise for the other.

Most of my adult life, I’ve exerted more effort trying to find out how to reverse time for the other aspect. I still haven’t found the answer. But I’m hopeful.

I’ve always enjoyed the idea of time-travel. No surprise that my highest ever exam result in college (a perfect score, and in philosophy at that) was for an essay on Marcel Merleau-Ponty’s concept of temporality. My inspiration, however, has always been much more mundane than that.

I’ve always been a fan of the Back to the Future trilogy. Not for its hilarity or quotable quotes (“Great Scott!”, “1.21 Jiggawatts!”). More for its grasp of the paradox of time travel. It’s simple really. All events, whether in the past, present or future, are all linked together. Change one simple event, and you affect all others, most often for worse, and eventually fall into the slippery slope of consequences. As you all know, Marty never did return to his present, but to an improved one. And while he may have changed his future, it will never be free of conflict. The time machine will always change things. And the temptation to use it will always linger.

And as for the movie adaptation of HG Wells’ classic (The Time Machine), it too has a valuable lesson: Time travel can never be used to change events in the past, for these events in the past could have led to the construction of the time machine. And were it not for the time machine, one would not be able to travel to the past to exist in that same space in time to begin with. And so everything will continue to conspire to lead towards the construction of the time machine. “I could travel back a thousand times and she would die each time.” Hence the paradox. Getting a migraine yet?

My point is this: We may want to change the past, yet the hindsight we gain from these failures are the very reasons we wish to change what’s already done. Going back would mean losing these insights, and hence dooming ourselves to make those same mistakes all over again. And the cycle continues. And to steal a line from a very good book I read once, "Time is the enemy. A man has wounds it cannot heal..." (Hand of the Enemy - Kerima Polotan)They’re the very wounds that lead to the epiphanies that, we hope, will prevent us from making the same mistakes in the future. And with any luck, we might see those chances again.

So in the tradition of reinterpreting seemingly mundane quotes from mainstream artists, just in the same way I started that philo exam (I used Mike Shinoda, and I'm sure you all know that song), I leave you with wise words from an unlikely philosopher. This one’s name is Kanye Omari West.

“I tried to right my wrongs, but it’s funny those same wrongs help me write the songs.”