Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Writing Prompt: Regrets

Disclaimer: Not all of these writing prompts are going to induce me to produce hilarious and ridiculous stuff. What follows is not terribly hilarious and not ridiculous at all. If you came here today for the funny, I won’t be offended if you give this one a skip. Thank you.
  Disclaimer: Not all of these writing prompts are going to induce me to produce hilarious and ridiculous stuff. What follows is not terribly hilarious and not ridiculous at all. If you came here today for the funny, I won’t be offended if you give this one a skip. Thank you. Lots of people have regrets: moments in their life, if given the chance, they would invade the mind of their younger self and give themselves the wisdom gained by time. They would change the situation to avoid heartbreak, great personal loss, or injury. In our science fiction saturated world, there are tons of stories about time travellers. In many of these stories, a scientist suffers a loss, usually that someone they love died. The scientist feverishly works to build a time machine to go back and stop this event. But arriving at the crucial moment, they find that they have created a paradox: the person they spared from loss is happier than the one sitting in the time machine, and as a result this happier scientist has no pressing need to create a time machine. The grief stricken scientist may have suffered, but that suffering drove him to become something new. This is the way I feel about regrets. Sure, I’ve done some stupid things in the past that I would like to forget. But without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today. The littlest decisions can direct our lives. I wouldn’t want a rewind button for my life. As far as a pause button goes, that would be pretty helpful. A pause button would help me calm down during an argument to give a response less motivated by anger. A pause button would help me order tasks when everything (read: my daughters) is going crazy. A pause button would help me assess situations and give me a minute to think about what I say to complete strangers so that I won’t come off as offensive, stupid, or crazy. I am who I am, ridiculous stupid past decisions and all. Given a choice, I’ll take the pause button every time. In fact, I’d pay you not to give me the rewind button. I don’t regret. I grow. / http://25.media.tumblr.com/f488e788bf02ac36e016e840e339b31e/tumblr_mhs3ccAeB21qee12to1_1280.png



Lots of people have regrets: moments in their life, if given the chance, they would invade the mind of their younger self and give themselves the wisdom gained by time. They would change the situation to avoid heartbreak, great personal loss, or injury.
In our science fiction saturated world, there are tons of stories about time travellers. In many of these stories, a scientist suffers a loss, usually that someone they love died. The scientist feverishly works to build a time machine to go back and stop this event. But arriving at the crucial moment, they find that they have created a paradox: the person they spared from loss is happier than the one sitting in the time machine, and as a result this happier scientist has no pressing need to create a time machine. The grief stricken scientist may have suffered, but that suffering drove him to become something new.
This is the way I feel about regrets. Sure, I’ve done some stupid things in the past that I would like to forget. But without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today. The littlest decisions can direct our lives.
I wouldn’t want a rewind button for my life.
As far as a pause button goes, that would be pretty helpful. A pause button would help me calm down during an argument to give a response less motivated by anger. A pause button would help me order tasks when everything (read: my daughters) is going crazy. A pause button would help me assess situations and give me a minute to think about what I say to complete strangers so that I won’t come off as offensive, stupid, or crazy.
I am who I am, ridiculous stupid past decisions and all. Given a choice, I’ll take the pause button every time. In fact, I’d pay you not to give me the rewind button.
I don’t regret. I grow.

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