Time travel

Few weekends ago I watched a movie called “About time”, a 2013 comedy drama. The story line was good, the acting was great, and, the message embedded in the movie was stupendous!

In the movie, the protagonist has the power to go back to his past, physically relive a time in his life and, be able to return to his current life. This seems like a boon, doesn’t it?!! But, as the story unfolds, you start seeing that not everything about possessing this power is as good as you initially thought it would be. The end leaves you with a thought to ponder over.

I found a striking similarity between the movie and how we live our life, well, for the most part!

Just like the protagonist, haven’t we all wished so many times that we could relive a happy or a special period in our life, or go back to a person that was dear to us but is no longer around, or enjoy the company of friends that have been lost in the sands of time?

Although we know that reliving the past, no matter how much we may desire it, is just wishful thinking, we still crave for it! Only if I could go back to those days for a moment, for a day, for just sometime …. we wish and we keep wishing.

While these pangs for the past are perfectly normal, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to recreate that magic of the past in the present?

If your answer is an emphatic YES, read on. Here is what I got from the message in the movie.

First, rather than living your life in a blur, slow down a bit.

Ha! What’s new you might say? We’ve heard and read this umpteen times! We all know that we should slow down. But how can we??!! We have so many things to tend to, and to add to that, we now have anxiety and more stress due to the pandemic. So, how exactly do we slow down - not just physically, but mentally too?

Well, here’s what we do - each day we do all the exact things/chores/activities we normally do. That is, we live the same crazy life that we live today, BUT, with a little twist!

Instead of going through our daily routine with the everyday tensions and worries that we unconsciously tend to carry with us, we consciously take a note of the sweet little things or even just one sweet thing, that are buried in each activity that we do.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover that there is indeed a sweet factor, no matter how small, to the most mundane things we do! All we need to do is to take notice of this sweet factor every time we do anything.

Doing this has the effect of slowing down the pace of life. It gives us a renewed sense of happiness even in the most banal things we do every day. Try it!

Second, live each day as if we have deliberately come back to this one special day to relive it.

How would we live this day then? How would we spend this day? What would we do to make this day interesting? What would we do to make this day remarkable? What would we do to make it such that we would long to come back to it, just like we crave to go back to our happy past?

Make THIS day, today, crave worthy - one that you would long to come back to! Make it memorable in any big or small way you can!

If we do these two things then maybe, just maybe, we will not feel the need to travel back in time at all. May be we will no longer yearn to relive the past.

Because, THIS is the exact day we always wanted to live!