If you could go back and change one event in your life what would it be?

[OswinOswald]

Are you happy with your life? Is there something you regret doing (or not doing!) that might have changed the trajectory of your life?
a la Everything Everywhere All At Once, is there an alternate reality version of you that you think would have been awesome?

I wish I had not taken so long to find my chosen career. It's true that sometimes the process of discovery is the important part. But once I did pick that career, I was pretty sure what niche in that career I wanted to do, but I entertained a lot of other options just to be sure. If I hadn't spent so much time doing that, I feel like my life might have been a little more streamlined and I wouldn't be so old and at the point in my career I am today! Some might argue that I needed to go through processing all those other possible career paths to get here, but I still ended up where I started in the end, so to me it ultimately seems like a lot of time could have been saved!

 

[MiniPocketWorld]

I think I would go back and pick one of two things. Number one is probably what I'd go for depending on if the college had the classes (I don't remember) and if my grant would have covered it. One of the biggest issues was finding a school that would accept that grant.

1. Go to school for accounting. Any desk job I've ever applied for wants to stick me in accounting but doesn't want to train me. Doesn't matter what other desk job I applied for, which is usually customer service via phone since I have experience in customer service. These places seem convinced I'd be best in accounting but I never took accounting in college. So, they don't hire me after expressing how much they want me for that job. (Well, train me then via shadowing? I'd be cheaper than someone with papers.)

2. While growing up, pushed more into my art skills and jump into digital art with Ms paint. I lost art skills by losing reasons to draw and I was good at hand art at one time. Multiple people told my parents to put me in art classes but refused. Some family even offered to pay for it but my mom forbade me to and also said you don't want to be a starving artist. We had a computer most of the time between middle school and highschool and it had ms paint on it. I could have worked on pixel art, or zoomed out and tried working on scenery art on there. I'd be better than I am now. Though, all I'd have is a mouse. Back then there wasn't much for learning computer coding online I don't think.

 

[Bluelady]

So many. Before last year I would've answered with the night a relative died. However, another relative met a similar tragic end. It wouldn't feel right choosing which one to save. If I were not allowed to save them, then I would do over my junior spring. I didn't find out until later that a counselor thought that I said that I didn't want to go to college. As a result, she didn't have me attend summer school for Algebra. I thought that it was odd, but I didn't question it because counselors should know what they are doing. After all, it's for the student's best interest. A lot of the universities that I applied to rejected me because of my low grade in math.

 

[Midoriya]

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because I believe everything happened in my life to guide me to where I am now, and I wouldn't change a single thing.

 

[Xara]

there’s a lot of things that i would do anything to go back and change if i could, but my first thought was to go back to the day that my grandmother died. not to save my grandmother, as she was very sick and miserable and i know that she wouldn’t want to be saved, but to try and save my late cat.

one of the cops who showed up after my grandmother died accidentally stepped on my cat, tearing something in one of her back legs. she injured her other back leg when she was running away to hide after. my parents and i were so preoccupied with my grandmother and the shock of her passing that we weren’t even thinking about my cat or where she was. it will forever be the biggest mistake of my life.

if i could, i would go back to that day and keep an eye on my cat the entire time. i wouldn’t go to my room to try and start processing everything that had happened by myself, or to just get away from all of the people and the chaos and the grief. i would stay with my cat the entire time, and make sure that no one hurt her.

it’s possible that she would have still died when she did, as her death wasn’t caused by her injuries, but by respiratory issues, but she could have at least spent her last few weeks being able to walk, jump, stand, and overall get around.

 

[Ichiban]

I wouldn't want to change anything major, as I feel that my life decisions are what lead me to where i am now (a well paying job in a well paying field) but there are minor things I would have liked to have done differently, like making a better effort to stay in contact with friends from junior high instead of drifting away.

also waiting a few extra years before selling off my retro games LOL could've made bank

 

[~Kilza~]

Honestly, I don't really want to change anything. I can't help but think about the butterfly effect, how the way things happened in the past is what caused us to end up where we are in the present. While there's definitely been some rough moments in my life, they've ultimately led to a present where I am happy and hopeful for my future. I wouldn't want to change that for anything.

 

[Paperboy012305]

I would change very minor things in life, such as trying to tell myself not to Time Travel on the day I got NL as I broke that promise I made, which lead me to get depression in that year's December. Thankfully it didn't last very long as a month later I was back in action! I still resetted every so often until August of 2015 but I was trucking along.

Another thing is that I missed out on so many cool Skylanders from the Trap Team era onwards, I should've bought them and forget about the rare Skylanders as I didn't have much money on me back then, which is the reason I still collect them to this day.

And finally, I remember seeing a 3ds I really wanted at a flea market, though for some reason I backed out from buying one. Now, every day I think of that 3ds. I already have one 3ds, it's just that I only have ONE working 3ds, every others I have are broken. And if anything bad happens to it, all my NL friends won't be able to see me ever again knowing the online servers shut down in April.

That's all I can think of, and those are minor changes. Any major events I could change I'm okay with it being kept that way.

 

[Croconaw]

I'm not sure I'd change anything. I'm under the impression that even changing one minor thing would alter my life drastically. I'm okay with where I'm at right now. I'm not where I want to be, but I'm getting there eventually.

 

[pottercrossing]

I think, had I stayed with my best friend and joined his friend group right at the beginning and not drifted off to join with those other people, I would have avoided SO much hardship. Had I not become friends with those people and ended up dating one of them, which ended in disaster, I would be much more... stable. I wouldn't be having constant panic attacks, I wouldn't be afraid that my friends are going to abandon me, I'd be less paranoid, you get the idea. That whole year was the worst one I've ever experienced, and I was all alone for the entire year before that.

 

[Violet Witch]

I wouldn't change anything because without the rollercoaster journey I've been on so far, I wouldn't be who I am today.

 

[Seastar]

Considering I really like who I am as a person currently, I don't think I want to change anything. Things aren't exactly going well but I feel like changing something would cause me to not even really be the same person.

I would go back and stop myself from leaving behind a Neopet plushie at a hotel, or losing a Pokemon figure at school, but I'm worried that would cause a butterfly effect I'm not aware of, especially since those events happened such a long time ago.
On the other hand I know very well what I would lose if I stopped some drama from a few years ago from happening, and I don't want that butterfly effect at all.

 

[S.J.]

It’s hard to really choose one thing/event (or many things) that I would want to change about my past, because I don’t know how changing those things would affect my present and future. I definitely haven’t done everything perfectly (or the way I think I should have), but I don’t think any of us have.

I’m cautious to have regrets because firstly, regretting something (I've done, haven't done, or done poorly) isn’t going to change my past, and secondly, hopefully I have continued to learn and grow as a person through these experiences.

Hopefully I can continue to learn, make the best decisions I can, and hopefully my past, present and future experiences will help me flourish.

 

[KittenNoir]

The only thing I would change is to go back the moment before my kitten in heaven died and try to change the outcome so he lives.

That is it everything else in my life is such a blessing and I am very grateful.

 

[TN4U]

I wish I had gone back to high school and talked to some of the girls I only had side conversations with. Back then, I was really wanting a girlfriend (still haven’t found one BTW), and only focused on the out-of-my-league types. I never gave the quieter ones a chance, and didn’t realize the mistakes I made until past graduation.

There was also a foreign exchange student in one of my classes during my senior year, and I thought she was a genuinely interesting person. She had a boyfriend back home, and I always used that as an excuse to not hang out with her after school. Fortunately, we went to prom together, and even though she had already dated someone else at our school by then (go figure), the boyfriend was kind enough to let me have the night out with her so I didn’t feel left out. According to him, he only wanted to hang out with his friends, which I understood and didn’t question. After she left the country, we never spoke again. It’s kind of a shame that our friendship never grew beyond the basic talking phase, and that was in large part due to me going for the unrealistic scenario of having a “hot” girlfriend.

Nowadays, I try to look for who someone is as a person the most over their looks, though I’m still quite a picky person, and it’s something I’ve always been struggling to get over. Of course, I keep my thoughts and opinions about appearances to myself regarding the matter, but I really do believe that is one of the reasons why I’m still single.

 

[Gabby]

I dunno if I'd change it, but sometimes I think about how life would have been different if I could have studied abroad. I was really depressed in college and didn't really believe in myself. Now I have the confidence, but not the opportunity.

 

[Kitsuragi]

stop myself from working at gamestop ))

 

[-Blue-]

I don't know if I would change anything. I could change one thing that's big and my life would probably be a lot different now. And even if I changed one thing that I might regret it's not like I would remember the experience so I'd probably end up doing something else because I never learned.

 

[Roxxy]

I believe everything happens for a reason. Changes would have consequences so although yes, I would love in theory to go back and do some things differently I couldn’t risk not having the people in my life now.

 

[VanitasFan26]

If I would've gone back and told my younger self to not eat so much junk food I would've never developed health problems. I know the doctors and my family try to tell me not to blame myeself but I still feel gulity.