You Can Change Your Life
Lessons in Time Travel
In Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day,” she concludes with the now famous lines, Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
So, what are you planning? Whether you’re sixteen or sixty, you have the power to decide.
Making life choices is often associated with youth. The classic “Coming of Age” novel focuses on the protagonist making decisions that will define the person they will become. We want our lives to count for something, but sometimes it’s hard to determine what that something is.
It’s easy to make a mistake and make the wrong choice. Maybe we’re stuck with the consequences of our actions or maybe we learn from our misstep and are given another opportunity. Or in the extreme, our mistake is “erased and we get a redo, an opportunity to “replay” an event and make better choices. It’s a popular idea in speculative fiction, the ability to travel back in time and change outcomes. True, If you change too many outcomes other disasters may follow, but it’s a fun fantasy idea.
We don’t have to alter the timeline to make different choices. Similar situations happen multiple times. The stock expression, “history repeats itself” is based on scholarly observation. Trying different solutions, until we get it right, goes back to our desire to make the best of the life we are given
Last month, I picked up a copy of the novel Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson published in 1997. Human Croquet was her second published novel and within its pages I could pick up on her initial experimentation with time displacement that ultimately led to Life after Life, published in 2013, her eighth novel. In it, scenes from a life are replayed in various iterations multiple ways. Make a different choice, and the timeline becomes drastically altered. To date, more than 13 million copies have sold.
Our memories are less than perfect. The older we are, the more flawed our memory may become. Different people, depending on their role in a situation, may discern the same event quite differently. Daily this exercise is played out in “real life” if I were to dare talk politics with strangers. Some people will complain to me about fake news and tell me the newscasters are lying. Others might tell me it is the government employees who are concealing the truth. Still other will lay the blame solely on the politicians. What we think we know to be true may not be true to someone else.
In our personal lives, something as simple as an invitation to a picnic, may take on different connotations. In Atkinson’s novel, Human Croquet, a picnic scene is retold multiple times from several different perspectives as protagonist Isobel recalls her distant childhood. Later her father Gordon recalls what he thinks took place at that same picnic and then subsequent accounts reveal the perspective of Aunt Vinny, and Isobel’s missing mother Eliza. Without spoiling the plot, this is one of the pivotal turning points in the book
A novel can be much more than entertainment, it can be instructive. The opportunity to contemplate multiple corrections to our own personal timelines is right in front of us. By improving our present we can change not only the future, but the past.
How can one change the past, you may ask? Example; If you once played the piano in the past and stopped, never to play piano again, the significance of your piano studies becomes irrelevant, not even worth mentioning. BUT if in the present you decide you want to be an excellent pianist, take up where you left off with your studies years ago, that previous work in the PAST becomes important and you’ve changed the relevance of the past. Nothing is final until we choose to stop becoming better versions of ourselves.
WRITING PROMPT: Alter a timeline. Write a scene then write it again with a change — large or small. The character decides to answer the door or not answer the door. They sweep the front step or they leave it. They shave off their beard or they adopt a puppy. They wait for the light to turn green or rush through a yellow light. What happens? Try it by having a different character narrate the same scene.
Moving over to the kitchen, where I often do my best thinking, last week I promised to provide a recipe using the herb dill. A favorite brunch dish at my house is an omelet made with goat cheese and lox (brined salmon). From the garden I add fresh tomatoes, onions, and dill. Here’s the recipe”
Goat Cheese Dill and Lox Omelet
Serves two people
Ingredients
5 eggs
Plain goat cheese aprox. 3 -4 Tbsp
Fresh chopped dill leaves
Half a cup of fresh sliced tomatoes (1/2 a large tomato or a handful of cherries)
Half a sliced onion
Four ounces of lox
Olive oil for frying
The above amounts can be increased or decreased, depending on your palate
Directions
In a medium to large size omelet pan heat olive oil and sauté onions until they soften and turn golden and then add sliced tomatoes. Beat eggs until frothy. Increase heat under the pan until the oil sizzles when you throw a drop or two of cold water on the surface. Once tomatoes are soft, add eggs to the pan. Depending on your skill and pan size, you can jostle and shake the pan or check and lift up the edges to redistribute the runny portions of the egg. When the omelet is almost set, turn down the heat to low and add the goat cheese, lox, and dill on one side. Cover the pan until the cheese melts. Flip the omelet closed and serve. Excellent with pumpernickel bread or fresh bagels. Enjoy!
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