The Butterfly Effect

"If only I could go back to the beginning of it all, then I might have been able to save her," says Evan Treborn in The Butterfly Effect.  He had a power to read his diaries or view a video of his past, then travel back to that time to do whatever he wanted.

I often say to myself, "If only I…" and wish to change the past. If only I could go back in time, then maybe I could fix or prevent some of my mistakes.  There are many things I want to alter.  For example, I wish I could take action to help better treat the diseases the killed my maternal grandparents, so they might still be alive today.  I also wish I could go back to when I first joined TORC.  Then maybe much of the trouble and addiction with that site could have been prevented.

In the end, Evan was successful, and everyone was happy with their lives.  It was the same with Marty McFly and Dr. Emmet Brown in Back to the Future.  In Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry and Hermione also accomplished what they set out to do, and things improved in the present.  All this makes me want to change history.

However, as the tagline of the movie states, Change one thing, change everything.  A butterfly’s flutter can cause a storm in another part of the world.  Meddling with the past could have drastic consequences in the present, and it was true for Evan before he succeeded.  Everytime he went back to fix a problem and help a loved one, he would put another loved one in danger.  Dr. Brown warned Marty of the dangers of time travel as well, especially when Biff Tannen used the time machine to make himself rich and cause much destruction.  Hermione also warned Harry about the dangers of time travel, such as wizards killing themselves, so they had to be careful.

One of the dangers could be erasing myself… Wait! Erase myself! I think that’s what I want.  I wish I were never born, so it would be good to erase myself.  Even better, I might want to go back and stop my parents from bringing me into the world.  Evan’s way would not work for this because I could only travel back to the days after my birth.  I would probably need something like what they used in Back to the Future or Harry Potter.

As shown in these stories and It’s a Wonderful Life, just one person in the world can make a huge difference.  However, I still think it depends on the person, and I don’t think I would.  Even worse, I think the differences I’ve made are bad, and have harmed the world, so it would be good if I were never born.