As I have been experimenting with my blog, I have been going over recent posts and fixing up any errors. These are usually spelling (Yeah, I know, there are probably still heaps of spelling errors… never was my strong point!) errors or typos. To date in all my reviewing and editing I have left the basis of the content the same.

I have been wondering though, if the time will come that if I no longer believe in something I wrote in the past, I will change it or write a new post to clarify some new position, I now, just as vehemently hold, as I did the one in the past that I originally wrote about.  (I think I understand what I just wrote?)

My problem with changing a previous post is that I feel as if I am cheating my past.

Sounds like a bit of a who cares or so what scenario, but, would it be the same if we suddenly looked in our history books, or old copies of the newspaper and found that the past had somehow changed.  It would be like the changing of history in the novel (and then movie) “1984” by George Orwell.

I suppose it is not the change that troubles me, but, the possibility that it would be accompanied by denial.

But, I think we all create time machines with our memories.  Keeping a blog or a journal is a bit of a reality check on what really did happen – or more to the point, our view of what happened at the time.

Keeping all these records are a good thing unless they just remind you of bad times and bad people.  I suppose that one of the advantages of time passing is that memories and feelings do fade; well most of the time.

I definitely think there is a ‘limitation of time on childhood trauma’ and in saying that I am not saying that bad things didn’t happen that changed and destroyed lives or there weren’t bad people in our lives in the past that may still need to be punished; what I am saying is that there is only one life so why should we let someone or something from our past wreck our future.

In the book Too Soon Old Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston (a really good read by the way) he goes on to say that we are responsible for most of what happens to us – I am sure this is not always the case, such as when we are kids, but we are most certainly responsible for what we do from that time on.  Most importantly, for me, who lives regret as a daily mantra he said:

“Coming to terms with the past is inevitably a process of forgiveness, of letting go, the simplest and most difficult of human endeavours.  It is simultaneously an act of will and of surrender.  And often seems impossible until the moment we do it.”

So maybe the ‘time machine’ is actually in us, we just have to switch it on.

I know one thing, I took his advice a few months ago with someone I had spent an entire lifetime hating.  And I just stopped hating them, I actually forgave them, and I let it go.  It was an act of will and surrender and I really didn’t know what it was like until the actual moment I really (Really!) did it.  Suddenly I was in the Tardis with Dr Who and I did turn back time.  The unfortunate part is that at that same moment I realised how much time I had lost.

Maybe my quest to be a better man is about using the time machine for good not evil.