Going Back

One morning, I woke up with the power to change my past. I could look at my life like an unpublished story; I could fix all my mistakes, point myself along the path I knew I should take, stop myself from getting hurt during my passage through time. I went back to the beginning and gave myself all the resources I would need to be successful in life, to ensure I would never be in want for more materials and aid. I suddenly forgot how to make use of limited means, suddenly only having memories of being always adequately supplied. I went back and told myself who I should spend my life with, already knowing, hoping to spare myself the pain of difficult times and the heartbreak of failed relationship. As I did this, I felt my heart empty like a sieve filled with water, no longer knowing what it felt like to succumb to the reckless danger of falling into love. I grew old changing my past, never accomplishing anything more than I had before I found myself master of my past. As I laid down for my final rest, my mind racing, I considered my life. I was disappointed. As I approached the end, I felt the finish line quickly approaching, stealing up as it had while I was rummaging in the drawers of my past, picking out every particle of dust rather than exploring the house and the world that that desk existed in. I realized I never changed the world because I would not let it change me. Blackness approached, and my eyes drooped and closed.

I open my eyes, it’s morning. I shake the dream out of my head, already it drifts away. When I walk out the door, I don’t go out to be great or to rock the world. I go out to make mistakes.