Retrospect, Foresight, and Generally Thinking of Everything But Now

As you stomp away angrily from a heated debate, you silently and figuratively kick yourself for not ending on a more clever retort. Now that it's already too late, countless possibilities for the ultimate one-liner that would shut them up forever flood your mind. If only you could go back...

Dosing off in class, you imagine that one perfect confrontation. Finally, you and that figure of hostility are alone in a room where you can air all of your grievances. They would at last see the error of their ways and understand that THEY had been the one at fault all along, perhaps ultimately sniveling at your feet and begging for your forgiveness. You would do it tomorrow. Or, at least some time next week. Actually, it'd probably just be more convenient for everyone if you waited to graduate from high school and then did it. But then you'd do it. For sure.

People as a whole spend far too much time worrying about things that don't pertain to now. On average, how much of your day is spent either dwelling on things of the past, or stressing about things that are yet to happen? TIJMU Stat Lab* reports that the average human mind spends only 1.3% of the day thinking about the task currently at hand! Clearly, with the unmatched depth of the human mind, it is expected that we care so much more than we should, but is it the right way to live life?

It's more often than I'd like I see a tweet or facebook status update musing "if i could only go back..." or "if i had a time machine...", abusing the ellipses like a hamburger belonging to David Hasselhoff (an oldie, but a goody). First, let me point out that these ideas are so useless that they actually have the audacity to simultaneously yearn for the past while also speculating on the future! Although the denotation (AP LANG VOCAB!!!!!1!1!) of such a status update would be that such a person had an innate desire to somehow in the future acquire a time machine for whatever reason they left ambiguous, the connotation of such a statement is they would like to go back to the past so they could fix some stupid problem that doesn't matter to anyone and is likely only important to them. 

Dear, if you had a time machine, you wouldn't be trying to go back and fix a high school relationship. How small-scale is your thinking? Where are your priorities!? Have you SEEN Back to the Future?!? Because if you somehow got a hold of ridiculously advanced time travel equipment necessary to traverse history's timeline, I hope to god you're not going back to retread on some dumb thing you said when you could bring home SELF LACING SHOES.

technology.

As a closing thought, I decided it would be hypocritical to engage in such foresight, retrospective tomfoolery that I just tore apart, so from this sentence henceforth I shall disassociate with all active thought not relating to what is currently happening. Not like my grades can suffer any more. I have to pee. Going to toilet.


*Things I Just Made Up Stat Lab