Lost Time

Lost Time

I was watching The Lake House the other night with my parents. It's a time-travel romance starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. There are two important facets to the story: yearning for lost time, and the essential need to rewrite history. Bullock first finds Reeves in the past, then loses him to the inescapable weavings of Fate's web, then regains him again by warning him across four years' time.

Then I just finished watching the old Twilight Zone about the guy who goes back in time and tries to prevent Lincoln's assassination (unsuccessfully). In this story, unlike the Bullock epic, we want to rewrite time but we fail. We cannot change history, Rod Serling tells us.

It's not just time we all want to rewrite, however. We have this tendency deep within our psyches to spend unimaginable amounts of emotional energy in trying to rewrite others. We hope, pray, and cajole those we care for to act in a way pleasing to us. We want to rewrite their history, as though in doing so we could rewrite our own. Really, I believe the futile attempt to change others' deep-seated behaviors, even when well intentioned, is a personal battle within ourselves to fulfill some unrequited longing.

Change yourself for the better, and you can affect others' behavior for the better. Attempt to change another person without first examining yourself, and you'll doom your effort to failure.

This I know from experience....