“Every warrior must learn the simplest truth: that pain is inevitable and suffering is optional.”
-Malcolm Merlyn
In the last few weeks, I have often been involved in debates about heroes and the possible side effects that may arise from being one, especially the effect of wanting to travel through time, principally towards the past rather than the future.
In the last few weeks, I have discussed with you two different aspects that come with being a hero to someone, one aspect being positive and enjoying, whilst the other is rather seen as negative and painful.
What is the link between the two ideas that I just elaborated in the last two articles? They actually complete each other in a certain sense.
Whenever we are in pain, due to failure, the lost of a loved one or something else, we tend to feel like the weight of the world has fallen on our shoulders. We cannot go on anymore. Our insides become filled with guilt, shame, pain and heartache. Barry Allen illustrates that well ; whenever he is filled with a mistake he has made, his reflex is to actually go back in time in order to to repair. The only flaw in that issue is that whenever the past is altered, a new alternative reality is created. It may seem like everything has gone back, but as Allen progresses in his new ‘present life’, he discovers how the small, meaningful things have changed.
As much as sometimes we hate to admit, no matter what happens, one should never attempt to change the train of life. Even though it is wrong to try and change the past, when a person is tremendous pain, can we really blame them for wanting to change the timeline? I know I would have done the exact same thing, if I had the powers to travel back in time.
As a reminder of my previous article, heroes are normal human beings, not gods. They cannot be expected to always make the most rational choice. Sometimes, their emotions get in the way. Truth be told, it is okay. They have the right to think about themselves sometimes, since they spend so much time attending other people’s needs.
Coming back to the idea of time travel, let us try to conceptualize your journey on this planet so far: you are someone’s hero. You would anything for them to be happy, safe, out of harm’s way. They mean the world to you and try to remain positive in order for them to always find support and strength in you, even if that means that they do not know much about where you come from.
One day, your dark memories start to come to life, affecting your behavior and the way you think. You are in pain. You cannot see things clearly. You make a mistake, and that person who meant the world to you got hurt. What happens next?
You blame yourself for what happened. You take upon yourself that because of your weaknesses of your hurtful past, you could not protect the ones you love. You wish you could go back in time and erase that dark memory you have in the back of your mind and then come back to the present. That way, for sure, your loved one would not get hurt.
Maybe. Maybe not. That does not mean that you two would still be together, or even know each other. That does not mean that you would be still be the same person you were.
Good or bad, memories are there to help us learn,grow, move on and become better people for the future. Just like an arrow, those memories pull us back into the past sometimes as a reminder of the long way we have come, in order to let us go afterwards, making us go even further ahead than we ever thought we could have.
We may not be gods, but we have so much energy within that can take us so far. Why do you think it is scientifically possible for someone to “love you to the moon and back”?
Change The Lens 