Written in 2019
A life lesson on regrets
Recently one of my younger sisters has been going through The Flash on CW. If you follow Syfy Wire on Twitter, read articles about superheroes on The Verge reviews, or even watch The Nerdist you know how many times the Flash has played on the concept of time travel and altering events, causing a butterfly effect and creating alternate timelines.
Normally the concept of time travel intrigues me, but when it comes to a story’s plot, I feel as if it is a sad excuse to stop caring about what happens. We know if you add the possibility of time travel there is a subconscious natural conclusion is that you can go back and fix anything. The Flash takes a unique approach to that. While Barry Allen, The Flash, constantly messes up his present (and future) by changing the past, he’s never quite able to recreate the timeline he was originally in. The phrase, “you never know what you got until it's gone” comes to mind each time he regrets messing the current timeline up. Honestly, it’s annoying constantly messing up timelines but I caught something that finally that made me think about my own life.
In a cross-over episode, The Arrow (Green Arrow), Oliver Queen, comforts Barry after he drastically messed up the timeline. It’s his words that struck something in me. He tells Barry that anyone would do the same if they could. We all have regrets, and often we would go back to change things if we could. I know I would, I even wrote a blog post back in the day about living my life with no-regrets looking forward. If I’m honest, that mindset has ruined far too many friendships, relationships, potential jobs, and education for me. I’ve passed on things because I didn’t want to risk things in case of regrets, and I’ve risked things because I didn’t want to have regrets for not taking opportunities.
Yet here we stand several years later, and in my current transition period, I’m left to my mind more often that I would like, I can say I’ve had far more regrets in the last five years of my life than anytime before. But I think the biggest thing I’ve gathered from The Flash is that even if I could change the things I regret, doesn’t mean I would like the change. Barry has to learn to live with his decisions and not let his actions prevent him from moving forward. I didn’t know I needed to hear it, but I’m glad I caught it. Now I just have to let my past teach me, let it be, and learn to continue living with all the regrets, past and future I’ll have. Because I can’t change it once it’s done, and I won’t always make the right decisions moving forward. That shouldn’t stop me from living in the present and focusing on what I can change.
-David Sager