Time travel is a really fascinating subject. That’s why it is one of the most recurring themes in sci-fi movies and tv shows. It is just so cool to see people in these movies travel back and forth in time doing all sorts of crazy things.

It really makes you wish that we had such capabilities in the real world too. Well, scientists say that while travelling to the past may be impossible, travelling to the future could theoretically happen.

Don’t get too excited though. It might take centuries before we are anywhere near such capabilities. We’ll be long gone by then, having never known the awesomeness of time travel.

I have often wondered what I’d like the most, had I the choice. To go back into the past and change things, or be able to know the future. Let’s say, you had a choice, which would you do?

Changing The Past

Let’s face it. We all have regrets. We’ve all made mistakes that we wish, we could just somehow take back. If there was a redo option in life, I would have taken it a few times for sure.

If we had the ability to travel to the past and change some things here and there, we could essentially make our lives perfect. No mistakes ever done. Period. But therein lies the moral dilemma.

It is the mistakes in life that teach us great lessons that we carry with ourselves as reminders and it is those mistakes that help us grow as a person and to make better decisions in life. Take those away and what did your learn?

Just like death gives meaning to life, the failures give meaning to the successes. And there is no guarantee that undoing your mistakes won’t cause your to make even bigger ones. Changing even a single event in the past may have huge repercussions on your present.

That’s why everyone tells “The Flash” to not do it!

Knowing The Future

At first sight, this capability might seem totally useless because you wouldn’t be travelling to the future, you’d just know it, but think about it for a second. The future has the answers to all the questions you could ever ask.

We could see the progress of humanity in different centuries, played right in front of our eyes. It would be really exciting to see the social and economic structure of the future. More than that, it would be just beyond awesome to know about the future technologies and possibly inventing some of them on your own. haha!

You could also see your own future and what you’ll be doing in the future. If you don’t like what you see, you’d have the power to change your present. One thing is for sure, you would definitely get rich knowing the future stock prices of several companies and investing accordingly.

Also, you could prevent bad things from happening, like saving people’s lives for instance. The possibilities are endless and this ability to peek at the future is really god like. It can quickly turn you into evil if you have the slightest hint of a dark side within you.

What Would I Do?

I think I would go with the second one. I believe that the past is where it belongs. What is done, is done. Also, you can never know how it would change your present. Maybe, changing the past could even erase your existence.

Knowing the future is something that really excites me. Not because of the god-like ability that would make our life real easy and a walk in the park (something that anyone would choose in a heart beat in today’s world).

What excites me, as a tech enthusiast, is to see all the endless technological innovation that will happen and how that will impact our lives. I want to see technology enable every single person on Earth to live a better life. I want to see us humans colonise the galaxy and even more.

So, yeah. I would definitely want to know the future if I had the choice.

All images taken from the public domain.