If I Could Go Back

 

The difficulty...nay the impossibility

“If I could go back”

There are some things I would change

If only going back could be a fact.

But what about those movies?

Time tunnel and the like?

Reverse the cogs of time

Change those gears and get it right.

Get it right the first time,

So many errors so many mistakes...

Some deliberate...nay all deliberate

Like it was fate.

The absolute maze of life

A tapestry of decisions and choices,

Rushing, bombarding, alluring

So many noises and voices.

A preset prompter to do wrong

As though right is not the way,

Hobson’s choice over and over and over

Holding sway.

Should do differently but can’t

Should do, could do but cannot

As though programmed,

This was my slot, my lot, my spot.

And here I am

Wishing I could go back,

And change what?

What is written is written!

We can’t change a jot.

Going back!

A backward move,

What would it prove?

Perhaps nothing

But it’s a chance,

Another chance to cut a different groove.

A different groove?

Nay! Impossible!

A different groove in the same slot,

See what I mean?

The prompt: same slot, same spot, same lot.

If I could go back

It would make absolutely no sense,

Repeating what was done coming forward

Would be the same repeated offense.

And then what, when I reach this spot?

To where would I move

Having gone back like I had wished

But having returned in the same groove…

Having no groove, no path

No future experiences from which to learn

So that in the event I must go back

I could have a groove by which to return?

If I could go back

The difficulty...nay the impossibility,

But If I could go back

Would be simply repeating the futility…

The futility now being experienced,

The futility to be experienced by going back,

The futility coming back to this very spot

Tripled futility would be the fact.

If “I could go back”

Would be an absolute waste of time

Since coming forward again

I would be of the same mind.

The fact of the matter is:

If we could go back

We would do the same thing coming forward

Because that is the historic fact.

Stewart Russell © October 2019

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)