Time travel is, and has been a topic pondered by many over the years. We see people’s imagination at work in the form of films and other media. A multitude of people, I’m sure, have made their own attempts at the comprehension of what I would believe to be a popular question among the creative minds of the world. The questionable proposal under discussion here would be, If time travel becomes possible, where would I travel to first?
I have an answer to this simple, but essentially limitless question. My answer to this question would be that I would not travel to any time, outside of right now. I believe that to do so would go against human nature. I believe that as much as we wish that we could go back to a past moment for the sake of being ‘happier’ then, as much as this might seem all well and good, it would ultimately be best to stay in the now. Choosing an alternate time outside of right now simply means we have fallen victim to the classic trick the human mind plays on itself. To choose a past or future moment over this moment right now is not right in my mind.
To begin, I believe that time traveling to an alternate time is to go against human nature. This is because all of our lives, and certainly my life, there have been many times that I have been taught or taught myself to not wish for the past, but to learn from the past, and take the right steps to make your future better. Time traveling to the past would go against this principle, as you would essentially be choosing to exist in a different moment than right now. Not to mention the fact that all of our lives have taken place in an uninterrupted chronological order, and traveling to a different time would go against the natural manner of being a human, as this uninterrupted order would thus be interrupted in the natural human order. I would not stand for this interruption in my life.
At this point, we have to ask ourselves what true happiness is. To be truly happy in our lives, I believe would be complete satisfaction with the choices in life we have made in our lives in at least recent time. The classic trick our brains play on ourselves is that of choosing something pleasing now, as opposed to waiting even a short amount of time for something that would be better for us in the long term. Some decisions of something pleasing now may be minor, like choosing to read a comic book in your free time instead of a longer book, or something major, like choosing to abuse substances and do drugs, regardless of the severe and extensive health risks down the road in life. This is also true in the case of time traveling to a time recently in which you felt happier then you do now. Each day I try to recognize these decisions, and go against my first instinct, which is to do the easiest thing first. Instead of investing time into traveling to the past, one should invest in making decisions today that would grant them the total happiness granted by aforementioned satisfaction with your choices in life leading to that point in time. Choosing mindfulness is a healthy practice; a practice of living in the present.
If I could travel through time to anywhere, anytime, I would choose to go nowhere and no other time but in the present moment. Living in the present is something we have been encouraged to do, in the form of mindfulness. Human nature has no need to be interrupted by choosing to exist in a moment that is outside of right now. Decisions play an important role in our lives, and we need to have the will to live with our own. We are the sum of all our decisions made in life leading to this moment, and this will still be true as our lives carry on.