I’ve never studied astrophysics or quantum mechanics, but I consider myself fairly knowledgeable on the subject of time travel. After all, plenty of sci-fi books, movies, and television shows have explored and explained multiple means and methods of traveling through time, whether by racing past the speed of light in a powerful spaceship, folding and stepping through the time-space continuum, or hitting the gas pedal in a plutonium-powered DeLorean—or in any number of basement-built time machines.

My husband and I just finished watching Bodies, a Netflix series in which detectives in four different time periods—1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053—each discovered and tried to solve the murder of what turned out to be the same person. Some of the characters traveled to each other’s time periods, and in a few cases, we saw the same character as a young person in one era, and still alive but aged in a future one. It was a complex and sometimes confusing story, but everything actually made sense by the end of the last episode.

As with many time travel stories, part of the premise of this series dealt with the issue of going back in time to try to change events that happened in order to save the world. Or at least to prevent a deadly disaster. But this often begs the question of whether that will trigger other—perhaps even more devastating—tragedies.

As far as I know, time travel is still in the realm of science fiction. But often, after I watch a movie or show involving time travel, I find myself wondering what I would do if I really could travel back or forward in time. Where would I want to go? What would I want to do? Would I try to prevent something like Hitler’s rise to power, or 9/11, or Kennedy getting shot? And if I did attempt something like that, would I be locked up as a crazy person, or under suspicion myself for knowing about something awful before it occurred? That happens a lot in time travel movies, too.

Eventually, I abandon my mental meanderings and get back to real time in the real world. But I’m reminded once again that I can’t go back and change anything that’s happened, or that I’ve done, in the past. I can learn from it, though.

As for the future, I have no way of knowing what is yet to come. But I do know that it is the decisions we make and the actions we take today that will determine our future. And you never know. We might end up saving the world.

January 29, 2024
©Betty Liedtke, 2024

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