If you were given the chance to go back in time to your late teens or early twenties, would you? And why? Would you do anything differently?

At first glance many of us probably do think there are many things we'd like to do differently, mistakes we'd rather not make, things we'd want to do better in... but when it comes down to it these experiences are why we are who and what we are in the present. If we were to go back and start altering all the mistakes we've made we wouldn't be the same person afterwards that we were before we started tampering with the past, there's no telling who or what we would be at that point or if we would even still be alive or recognizeable as ourselves. I used to think there are so many mistakes I made between high school and college but if I went back and fixed them I would never have met the extroardinary people I've met, the friends I've made would never know me, and I wouldn't have ever really learned anything.

What kind of person would we be if we never made mistakes? How arrogant would we be if we never learned humility and accepting being wrong with grace? What kind of intolerable monster of a person could be created if someone were always right and always perfect?

More uncomfortably... what about the person we are now? If we undo that person's existence to create a new one is that suicide, or murder? There is next to nothing we can't change about ourselves anymore even on the physical level.

If there's something we don't like about ourselves or the world around us... why do we need time travel? Too many people believe that one person can't change the world, even if only their world. I'd rather improve myself and still be who I am than go back in time and effectively murder the person I've become.

My first reaction would be yes, I would take up an opportunity to go back to my late teens, not so much to effect any change, but more to relive the joyfulness of those times. Thinking about it further though, I would probably only do so if I could reenter that time period without any memory of what is to come. If I had memories of what was to come, or of what had passed, I would likely disappoint myself by having higher expectations of a particular memory.

Many times, we romanticize our past, making our memory of it far grander than the actual experience itself. Also, knowing what is supposed to happen next would greatly prejudice one's actions, altering forever the pattern of that new timeline. So, I would do it; but, with the condition that in so doing I enter without any knowledge of what's to come and fully aware that the timeline will inevitably be altered.

Accepting of the fact that when I reach my current age again, I will be a different person, in a different world, for better, or for worse.

I would not relive anything. All my experiences, good or bad, has made me who I am today which I think is a pretty good person. Without those bad experiences, maybe my life would have turned out different.

I had tons of bad experiences, but I learned from all of them and guide my kids not to make those same mistakes. Without those mistakes, I'd be flying blind with my children.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.