You must remember the rewind button that was a feature of those old VHS machines. With the tape cassette inside, simply by pressing the rewind button you could power back through the videotape to get back to where you wanted to be.
I have often thought how splendid it might be if we had rewind buttons for life itself. Most certainly, I would have used my button for a good number of things.
Take road accidents for example. In my life, I have been involved in five minor collisions and one nightmarish incident where the car I was travelling in turned over at a bend on a country lane in Perthshire, Scotland. This was at two thirty in the morning. How I clambered out of that car unscathed I shall never know. With a rewind button I could have erased the minor collisions and saved myself a lot of connected hassle and the scary incident in Perthshire would never have occurred.
Looking back, we all say stupid or regrettable things - especially when we are young and still finding our way in life. With a rewind button we could say different things or say nothing at all. Then those wrong words we recall would not continue to echo in our skulls years later.
There are much bigger things we might address with the aid of a rewind button. Earlier in our lives we reached crossroads concerning education, work, ambitions and relationships. Rather like the speaker of Robert Frost's famous poem, "The Road Not Taken" we perhaps found that "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" and we chose one ahead of the other. But what if we had taken the other road - the road that was more travelled? How might life have turned out then?
In that bigger regard, I have often wondered how my life might have turned out if I hadn't gone into teaching. I put my heart and soul into it - so many nights, so many weekends, so many working holidays, so much energy. How might it have been if I had put that energy, that dedication into some other line of work? Because when I look back, my often unseen labour was about developing the sons and daughters of other people, not about growing myself. In lots of ways, it was thankless and that's the truth. I had almost forty years of it.
With a rewind button, I could have phoned my father and my oldest brother Paul on the nights before they died and told them how much they meant to me and how I loved them. And of course I could have travelled back in time with the winning National Lottery numbers!
And what about you? If you could press your own rewind button, what might you change?
We wouldn't be the people we are without those experiences, painful though they are. However, I would certainly rewind a few relationships and other decisions I made. I don't regret my teaching career although I do wish I'd done more traveling before settling down.
ReplyDeleteThat song by Edith Piaf "Non, je ne regrette rien" does not seem to sit well with most human beings.
DeleteI'm not sure about a rewind but but how about an erase button. There are a few things I would like to erase. How about a repeat button for those things we really liked. OK , I know I'm going outside your rules. But then I'm kind of a rebellious sort. Some rebellion got me into trouble. If I was able to just erase , would I learn anything?
ReplyDeleteGood extra ideas Red Rebel. Of course "Rewind" will never happen.
DeleteI wouldn't have gotten pregnant at twenty and I would have gone to university to study science, not nursing.
ReplyDeleteOpting for nursing meant a working life of increasing pressure and documentation too.
DeleteThe funny thing is I love nursing but I really did not want to be a nurse like my sister.
DeleteTeaching is a thankless task? I understand what you mean but no one can possibly know what a force for good you were. I was well into middle age before I even started thinking about my teachers, the good and the bad, the kind and not so kind, the ones I learnt a lot from and those who I learnt little from. The latter was not necessarily their fault.
ReplyDeleteI suppose there maybe some minor matters I would rewind and do differently or erase but not many. I am a product of the life I lived, the good and the bad.
I know that I had a beneficial impact on many children's lives and at first that gave me an enormous "buzz" but after twenty, thirty, forty years of it it becomes like a film you watch over and over again.
DeleteWhat might I change? SO MANY things, but then I wouldn't be the person I am today, with the children and grandchildren I now have and love so much.
ReplyDeleteLife was never going to be a bed of roses was it?
DeleteFood for thought there. Your life has turned out good, I believe - you and Shirley are great, you have created a beautiful and healthy family together, now in its next generation with little Phoebe. You most certainly have made a huge difference to more of your students than you will ever know, because they only realised later in life what it meant to have had a good teacher.
ReplyDeleteMy personal rewind button would not involve any road accidents (thankfully), but a few things I have said and done in my younger (and not so young) years. Nothing earth-shattering, just a few things I would prefer had not been.
Living with a pile of regrets would be very unhealthy. Thankfully, "Rewind" is only a notion. It will never happen.
DeleteMmmm... a difficult question to answer. Some answers are not so simple, unless we can remember the exact situation and any outside influences that might have affected our decisions.
ReplyDeleteThere are several minor rewinds no longer of any importance and not worth mentioning. The major rewind would go way back to my youth, to the time I decided to give up studying architecture and opted to study art and design instead. Although I can't say that the career change was in any way detrimental to my working life, architecture and buildings have been a passion from an early age.
Well you are a dark horse Carol! I never knew about your art/architecture passion. Most Wednesdays, Bob at "I Should Be Laughing" does a post about a house he has discovered online - I think you might enjoy this. See my sidebar.
DeleteI imagine we all have moments we'd like to change. I can certainly think of a few, which I've probably already written about! Both things I wish I hadn't done and things I wish I had.
ReplyDeleteI remember the "Be Kind, Rewind" signs up in our local video rental store!
Was it metaphorical I wonder.
DeleteMy brain just doesn't work this way. I can't see how I could have the life I have now if eliminated or changed parts of it. BUT, there are at least a few small incidents, a few small moments that it pains me to look back on.
ReplyDeleteI've never had the feeling that you enjoyed teaching very much. Do you feel that you were pushed into the profession by expectations of others? How did you find yourself in that field?
No I was not pushed. I walked into it very much of my own volition and in the early years I enjoyed it tremendously. It's just that I felt I could have been more than just that. In some ways it was stultifying. I suppose that at first my motivation was that teaching could help to change the world and besides I believed in The English Language and its Literature. Words can be empowering.
DeleteI'm not much of a philosopher but if I were, I would probably say we would be worse people if such a rewind button existed. I think we would always be going back and redoing our mistakes instead of learning powerful lessons from them to use in the future.
ReplyDeleteThat surely does not apply to car accidents. You just want to avoid them whether they are caused by your own errors or someone else's.
DeleteI think of that movie, "It's a wonderful life" and I am reminded that if we could change anything in the past, then our present might be changed too. I wouldn't have married the man I did but then I would miss my children and grandchildren if my life didn't include them.
ReplyDeleteYou are thinking in terms of the big canvas Ellen but what about smaller things - maybe you said something wrong or failed to be there for someone or you accidentally damaged something. Not life-changing but nonetheless regrettable.
DeleteIf I changed anything, I wouldn't be who I am, where I am today. I try instead to think about the little things I can change today, that might make a huge difference in the future. I am sure your teaching made a difference in lives in ways you will never know. I wish I could go back and say THANK YOU to many of the teachers that changed my life by the hours and dedication they put in.
ReplyDeleteThere must be small things you could have changed that would not have impacted greatly upon who you became.
DeleteI’ve given this some thought as I’m sat in Sheffield having lunch
ReplyDelete, like Ellen,I’d change nothing
That's surprising. Not even small things said or done?
DeleteI would change Brexit.
ReplyDeleteSo it was you who did it! GRRRRR!
DeleteI've always regretted my undergraduate degree. I ended up with a degree that required me to take way too many Science and Math courses, even though I was more of a BA kind of girl. I used to drag my feet into most of my classes and struggle to stay awake. I should have been discussing Virginia Woolf, not swirling things around in a test tube. I want a redo!
ReplyDeleteIt is far, far easier to study a subject when you actually enjoy it!
DeleteThis is hard. But rewinding and not doing things that made you unhappy in life, would probably mean we would not have the children we love today. How can we tell if we had chosen a different path if we would have been any happier?
ReplyDeleteOkay I agree but there might be smaller, less consequential rewinds we might think of doing.
DeleteI wish I had found lorry driving earlier and started at 21 instead of 27. I wanted to move on to crane driving, but left it too late to get trained.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you did brilliantly in what was then almost entirely a man's world.
DeleteI don't know if I'd rewind because whatever I've done in my life has gotten me 'here,' and I like it here.
ReplyDeleteAs I have said to others, there may have been a few smaller rewinds you might have done - ones that wouldn't really have changed the course of your life.
DeleteStephen King's 11.22.63 explores that very question. There is a cascade effect...one change would cause a myriad of changes. Everything has consequences.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up on that book Debby. I will try to get round to reading it some time.
DeleteIf I had a rewind button, I would go back to my late teenaged years and early 20s and treat myself better. I accepted lots of bad treatment from other people because I didn't know I deserved better.
ReplyDeleteI mostly regret my high school relationship that resulted in a marriage that only lasted three years, to an emotionally abusive older guy. But then, if I had never married him, I almost certainly wouldn't have met my current husband, and that would have been a shame. So, like Bob, I guess the things I did in the past have gotten me "here", and here is a good place.
I see what you mean but "Rewind" could also be about smaller, less significant matters.
DeleteRead this book:
ReplyDelete"Kate Atkinson’s dazzling Life After Life, one of the top-selling adult books of 2014, explored the possibility of infinite chances, as Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again". (blurb on Amazon).
In fact I have read that book Margaret. It's the one with the fox on the front I recall.
DeleteIt is. I have read it, too, and reviewed it on my blog a few years ago.
DeleteI wish I'd had more confidence when i was younger. I was very shy and basically terrified of social situations. Now with old shoulders I am completely the opposite and wish I could have used that well in my youth.
ReplyDeleteI can identify with that ADDY.
Deletethere are things i have done that i regret: insulting people, getting involved in things that were not my business, some small car accidents, immature ways i responded to my small children....
ReplyDeleteThen there are things i don't regret but wonder what might have happened: if i'd chosen a different partner, if I had attended university instead of technical college.
In the end, I can't change it so I just try to be smarter next time
"Rewind" can only ever be a notion. The truth of it is that none of us will be able to do it. It's just a way of reflecting on life. I find it interesting that some people pull down the shutters straight away saying that they wouldn't change anything - almost as if they are affronted by the very idea of "Rewind".
DeleteAlmost everything. Except Judy.
ReplyDeleteYou are so sweet Bruce. With this remark I am sure that Judy will be happy to increase your allowance.
Delete