Carolyn and I really like watching the ABC show "Life on Mars" (Wiki article). It combines police drama and science fiction which sounds like a really bad "The Twilight Zone" episode, but it actually makes for a pretty interesting story. The show is about detective Sam Tyler who was hit by a car in 2008, and mysteriously wakes up in 1973, also as a police detective. Throughout the series, he attempts to live a life in 1973 but also try to figure out how this time travel/coma/alien abduction came to be. In this week's episode, Sam Tyler is given an opportunity when his mother here in 1973, who does not know who he really is, asks Sam to speak to her 3 year old son (basically himself as a kid) about life. Sam grew up without a father figure, and so his mother feels like he needs someone whom he could look up to. Irony of ironies, she turns to the future version of her own son.

At first Sam turns down the offer completely. The thought of talking to your past-self and saying something that might inevitably change your life in the future for better or for worse was too much of a responsibility to bear. He thought about telling himself about the hardships and trials that he would face growing up, but then realized that those events shaped the person whom he had become. To take those away could be disasterous.

Eventually, Sam changes his mind and decides to talk to the kid-version of himself. He tells himself what to expect in life. That is, things happen in life that can be disappointing or devastating, that people will come and go in his life, but that through it all its not his fault. He says that "that's part of life".

It made me wonder if I would take the same opportunity if I had a chance to go back in time. My initial instinct would also be to refuse the opportunity for the same reasons as Sam, but part of me also thinks that it would have been very helpful to know certain things about life when I was younger. The fact that I thought I had things figured out completely about life when I was 18 turned out to be completely wrong. A nice slap in the face would have done wonders:) But overall, I think that going through life experiences yourself teaches you in a way that no one else on earth can, even your time-traveling future self. If that wasn't true, then all of us would have listened to our parents when we were teenagers.