'cause semy_of_pearls got me thinking

[madbaker]

Somewhat paraphrased - You're given the chance to live your life over, with your current personality and mind. You can go back to any part of your life and start over.

To narrow down the reasons a bit and clarify: you have your current personality and knowledge of your current life history, but not the world's. You can change events of your life by avoiding a car crash that crippled you, but you don't know about assassinations or the events of September 11. You don't know to invest in Microsquish stock at its IPOand you can't test out of high school at the age of six. On the plus side, Star Wars in the theater will still be an awesome experience.

Clear as mud? Okay then.

[Poll #941985]
Please give your reasons and where you'd re-start, if you would, in comments.

Personally, I see no benefit in re-living junior high school and the first half of high school - I'd still be a mouthy short nerd. Yes, I'd be comfortable in my skin (which I definitely was not then). But that wouldn't make me popular or a non-bully target.

(I changed the parameters because if I could re-live with my current knowledge, I might do so solely to make myself filthy rich as an adult by buying Microsquish and Home Despot stock, "inventing" Netscape Navigator, and so forth. And preventing some mass tragedies. That's a totally different motivation.)

Comments

[wingedcorset.livejournal.com]

"inventing" Netscape Navigator
So you want to be jwz?

I kinda wish I had worked much much harder in college instead of slacking. But I wouldn't go back.

[seamoose.livejournal.com]

I suspect that actually being a know-it-all, rather than just being accused of such, wouldn't improve the quality of the life that I had. IF I had the option to go back, it would be to only change a couple of things, but what would get changed from that? We are who we are because of things that we did back then. Good or bad.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I'd like to change the ways I dealt with some people, which caused them hurt, etc, but overall not my whole life.

For example, there was one fellow I broke up with; I should have broken up sooner, and more definitively, and then refused to see him for, oh, six months or so, until he'd gotten over me, instead of having a sort of long drawn out but still friends situation.

[gaudete1066.livejournal.com]

The realist in me says, "You idealistic dork, you can't *really* do that, so why speculate?" But the idealistic dork in me says, "Yeah, I'd like to change some things, but I'd still be a small child and weaker than my adversary."

Over all, I guess I wouldn't want to go back through any of it. The adolescent helplessness, the miserable-sack-of-hormones teens... About the only time I would want to redo is my first bout of college. I'd've changed my major and finished and maybe gone on university. And I would have told X to push off and then moved back to California with my folks. Ah, fantasies...

[ornerie.livejournal.com]

everything before has led me to now and here.

now and here is pretty dang cool (in spite of current major life foo), so I'll just keep the package, thanks :)

[mad-duchess.livejournal.com]

SURE!! It's been a hell of a ride so far, like a good rollercoaster, why *wouldn't* I want to go again? Maybe I'd change a few things...nothing major...spent more time with my grandparents while they were alive, been less of a shit to my highschool boyfriends, slacked off less in school. Overall I think I'd wind up in basically the same spot I'm at now, maybe with a few less regrets, and what's not to love about that?

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

Precisely. With all the right intentions, going back and changing anything could alter the future dramatically. (Perhaps not as badly as the old Ray Bradbury (I think) story of going back to the age of dinosaurs and stepping on a butterfly, but ...)

[tshuma]

I think I'd change how I handled some interpersonal situations. It's strange. If I were to live my life over again, there are things I did in ignorance that I would not be able to bring myself to repeat, knowing what I do now. I have regrets, and I just don't see myself ignoring them just so I can arrive where I am now. There are people I've hurt, accidents I had, and lessons I've learned. If I could go back, I'd be someone totally different, somewhere totally different. And I think I'd be okay with that.

I have a marvelous relationship worth everything I've been through to get here. But I think I would choose to give it up, for the chance to be a better person. And that's probably just hubris -- I'm sure I'd make new, completely different mistakes. But I would try so very hard to apply the lessons I've learned in my life so far.

[maestrateresa.livejournal.com]

There are certainly some things that I would love to change/have done differently; some of these have had huge repercussions on my life. However, bottom line, I couldn't prevent the Hodgkin's Disease nor, therefore, the radiation/chemotherapy cocktail that has put me where I currently am healthwise. That being said, I ***NEVER*** want to have to go through chemo again (did I shout that loudly enough? ;-)

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I would start over at my senior year of college, and do the thesis I wanted to do, which was to write a screenplay of Book 4 of The Aeneid. I would know what I wanted to do with my life instead of wasting grad school and spending my thirties drifting. I wouldn't get fat, and I would get anti-depressants earlier.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Er, I think you missed the point (and the spirit) of the question.

I would rule like a terrible queen!!

[dakini-bones.livejournal.com]

Heads would roll!!!!