News from the Fourth Dimension

Time Travel

How many times have you wondered about going to the past and changing events that have had an adverse impact on your life, things like not saying stuff that made that special someone go away, or studying just that wee bit extra for that important examination?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could do that, Einstein and his Theory of Relativity be damned (though purists might say that the string theory may soon replace the much acclaimed and exalted brainwave of Einstein and his twin)?

But is it possible? Is traveling to the past and doing (or undoing) something that has had an effect on the future a likelihood?

Let’s, in an insane moment of imagination, assume that a dude (or dudette, one cannot be sure when the banner wavers may catch hold of you) gives you a time machine and you decide to go to the past and make sure that your worst enemy was never born (you neuter his/her father). So, the person in question hasn’t been conceived, and you get rid of that person.

But, if he never existed, how did you know that you are to eliminate him? Insane? Logical!!! That’s what is known as the grandfather’s paradox.

So, what’s happened, cannot be changed, however much one may try. Forget. Whatever’s worthwhile is right here, right now.

Phi says: There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if?' When you look back and see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions.