Tough Question to Answer

[Fred]

A few of us folks were having coffee in the bakery one Saturday
afternoon, and one of the group posed a very interesting question.

That question was: "If you could go backwards or forwards in time for a
24 hour period only, what day would it be?"

- It could be anytime from earths first day of existence to its last.
- Your presence would be spiritlike, invisible and non-existent to those in
your surroundings (picture Scrooge).
- Being spiritlike, you are safe from harm under all circumstances.
- You cannot alter past or future events, you are only observing.

After nearly a month, we are still discussing it.
No one has a definite answer yet. Not even our philosopher friend who
asked the question.

Any thoughts here?

Fred

 

[897tgigvib]

Hard choice. It would be with family. Maybe before I was born.

 

[digitS']

Family, Marshall? I hadn't even thought of going back to see what the old fellas were up to! Well Fred, it is a tough question!

History is so often measured by tragic events. Going back in time to something like the Battle of Gettysburg as a spiritlike, invisible presence that could offer no real help to the victims, seems kind of cowardly. It would be horribly unpleasant, as well.

I might like to go back to see if Helen was really as beautiful as the Greeks must have thought she was. However, I don't think entertaining these interests is very good for the Steve in the Present Moment.

Observing human toil and the mundane isn't anything that I've especially enjoyed. It is interesting when it isn't "my" mundane existence but wouldn't be for long. Watching Stradivari craft a violin or Johann Sebastian Bach play one, would be fairly well lost on me but that has to do with my own limitations.

You know, the perception of the American wilderness was portrayed by the artists at the time as something too wild and in need of taming. Still, I have some idea of what it amounted to and would recognize it as not so much as a wilderness and simply a place, a landscape peopled with those folks who knew how to survive and prosper there.

How about if I go back into prehistoric times? No interest in any volcanic eruption or Atlantis slipping beneath the waves. Jurassic Park might be interesting! Could check something out like really far back where even the fossil record is too skimpy. I don't believe there was any dramatic, watershed moment like - "and then they stepped down from the trees!"

How about:

this-could-be-the-oldest-flowering-plant-ever-found-in-north-america? Might have to take somebody with me to actually gain the botanical insight.

Steve

 

[so lucky]

Family, Marshall? I hadn't even thought of going back to see what the old fellas were up to! Well Fred, it is a tough question!

History is so often measured by tragic events. Going back in time to something like the Battle of Gettysburg as a spiritlike, invisible presence that could offer no real help to the victims, seems kind of cowardly. It would be horribly unpleasant, as well.

I might like to go back to see if Helen was really as beautiful as the Greeks must have thought she was. However, I don't think entertaining these interests is very good for the Steve in the Present Moment.

Observing human toil and the mundane isn't anything that I've especially enjoyed. It is interesting when it isn't "my" mundane existence but wouldn't be for long. Watching Stradivari craft a violin or Johann Sebastian Bach play one, would be fairly well lost on me but that has to do with my own limitations.

You know, the perception of the American wilderness was portrayed by the artists at the time as something too wild and in need of taming. Still, I have some idea of what it amounted to and would recognize it as not so much as a wilderness and simply a place, a landscape peopled with those folks who knew how to survive and prosper there.

How about if I go back into prehistoric times? No interest in any volcanic eruption or Atlantis slipping beneath the waves. Jurassic Park might be interesting! Could check something out like really far back where even the fossil record is too skimpy. I don't believe there was any dramatic, watershed moment like - "and then they stepped down from the trees!"

How about:

this-could-be-the-oldest-flowering-plant-ever-found-in-north-america? Might have to take somebody with me to actually gain the botanical insight.

Steve

Isn't that one of the orchids in Marshall's yard? Hey Marshall!

 

[so lucky]

Just out of curiosity, I would like to go back to the scene of an unsolved and very mysterious disappearance of 5 children (siblings) back in 1945.

 

[NwMtGardener]

I for some reason have a real interest in how people imagine the world will be in the future. I love to watch all the post-apocalyptic movies and tv shows. There was that somewhat scientific show, cant remember what it was called exactly, something about after all the people are gone, and what happens to all the things we built. How long it takes for them to disappear. So i guess i would pick any day in the future, 100 or 150 years from now, and just check out the changes to the planet. And humanity. And gardening and farming. And how people live. And medical advances.

 

[Smart Red]

If I can't change my past mistakes (not sure I would want to anyway) and I couldn't effect future events that I might see, I'm not sure I'd even want to time travel. Certainly the birth of the Christ child, observing one of His miracles, or watching Moses doing God's work might be worth missing a current day.