If I could do it over again — if I could go back in time — if I had said what was on my mind before I went through with it — If I had just shut up that time —
There’s a new Spider-Man movie coming out this week. One of Marvel’s themes in recent years has been alternate universes — somewhere in another dimension is a “you” and a “me” who made a different choice at key moments in our lives: took that one job or refused it, married that person or decided to cancel the wedding, that sort of thing.
In the last film they took clever advantage of the fact that three different actors have portrayed Spider-Man in the movies, by crafting a story where all three Peter Parkers were real, just in different universes, and they worked together.
It’s fun imagining “What if,” except when it isn’t, when we sink into wondering if our lives would be better now if we had made a different decision back then. Let’s cut to the bottom line: You can’t change your past decisions, and it’s a waste of time, energy and emotion to guess what the outcome would have been.
Yesterday is etched in stone, and tomorrow is never exactly what we imagined it to be. The only thing we can control is today, this very moment, right now.
Our best option is to pay attention today, this very moment, right now, and make the choices that seem right and proper in this present moment. Rather than brooding about past decisions, we can incorporate what we learned back then into making this moment the best version of reality we can muster.
All we have is this universe. Even if there are alternate universes, this is the one we’re living in, and it’s very unlikely we’ll ever get a peek into those other worlds. So let’s make the most of this one.
