Doctor Who is one of my favourite shows. What’s not to love about travelling back (and forwards) in time and experiencing all kinds of adventures.
This year, I have discovered my own form of time travel, and I’m loving it! No, I haven’t found a way of unlocking the secrets of the quantum universe, but in some regards something even cooler.
While some people shun reunions, I’ve discovered that they are one of the most amazing forms of emotional time travel going around.
Catch up with a group of people with whom you have shared a powerful experience (for example those awkward formative years at school) and within a few minutes, you’ve made the jump across time back into the distant past. Close you’re eyes and listen to the voices and there you are back on a school camp in 1984, or in the classroom with your favourite teacher. Not much has changed.
But the real kicker is that now with the power of hindsight you can switch between the current and past versions of yourself, looking back in at yourself, as an onlooker. Challenging your memories, and the stories you have told yourself, and in doing so rewriting your timeline to match the world as you see it today.
Revisiting the assumptions you made about the people you knew, and even the world you grew up in, can reshape the way you see yourself today.
It’s a little bit like visiting your 12-year-old self, without all the annoyances of paradoxes.