Why I should never visit my younger self
Written on 10th Jul 2023 by Alex Lowery
I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be very dangerous if I were to meet my past self. The idea of meeting my past self (or my future self) would be extremely exciting for me and I’d love to do it but there could certainly be dangers.
I have a tendency to be pedantic and want to correct people when they say things that are inaccurate. I’m not as much like this as I was in my teens but I still have my moments. For example, if someone says something happened in 2019 but I know it happened in 2018 I would have a desire to correct them.
This would be a problem if I met my past self because I would likely correct myself on things I didn’t know yet and my time to learn would come later. For example, I remember when I was 16 there was a man who some family members believed was on the autism spectrum. I was sure he couldn’t be because often he lied. I thought autistic people were always very honest people because I was and I had also heard online that autistic people are usually honest.
I now realize that while it’s common for autistic people to be honest this doesn’t really apply to every single autistic person out there as it is very much a spectrum and different for everyone. Many autistic people are honest but there are those who aren’t. If I were to meet 16-year-old me and he said this man couldn’t be autistic because of that I would likely correct him and tell him this wasn’t always the case. This might be a bad idea because 16-year-old me was going to learn this another way. If I told myself about it: it would change how I found out, likely altering my memories.
This is only one example. There are other things I’d likely tell myself that I just shouldn’t know yet. This could put a real dent in my experiences. But I likely just wouldn’t be able to stop myself from correcting me or telling me about the future because I often say things before I really think it through. This is why (even though the idea of meeting myself at different points in time is exciting) it would likely not be a good idea for me to do so.
Despite this, I have wished I could go back in time because I’ve made mistakes that I’ve really regretted and I wish I could go back and change them. However, maybe fixing these mistakes wouldn’t be the answer because it’s through making these mistakes that we learn and mature.
Thank you for reading this article.
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