Lessons

The past is there to be examined in infinite detail. Just what you just finished doing not half an hour ago is done; it cannot be undone, no matter by what process you propose. something that you did with the immediate intention of undoing can, at best, be put back into a semblance of its former self.

This is inarguably impossible. once done, no matter how tiny, a thing cannot be back as it was exactly the moment you did it. Some details will invariably be overlooked. even under controlled, scientific conditions, what is done IS DONE FOREVER, be it on a molecular or even atomic level.

You simply cannot duplicate something which is past, no matter how hard you try.

The further, however, is very much in YOUR HANDS. What is not yet does not exist -- you CAN change the future. In front of you is an apple; you might take a bite of it, or you might not. If you decide to, you have just created a past state that is irrevocable. IF YOU DO NOT DO so, however, the apple will be there, sitting on the table, exactly the same as it was a minute ago. Whole, unbroken by you -- indeed, completely unmoved from its position of just one minute ago.

But regrettably, while it seems unchanged, it has changed on ten billion levels, just in the minute you have sat watching it. Its atoms have been busy, infinitely busy, rearranging themselves. Not ONE SINGLE atom of that apple remains in the same state that it had been in one minute ago, except in your slow and impossibly limited powers of observation.

Now once we accept that the past is the past and is unchangeable, and that the future is infinitely changeable, possibilities radiating out in ten trillion different directions DEPENDING UPON WHAT YOU DECIDE TO DO OR NOT DO AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT, it must give one pause to reconsider the past.

Because now, because now that it IS the past, we are presented with an opportunity to consider what WOULD have happened or NOT happened, had you, or someone else, or something beyond your control, had not intervened.