Time and Time again

It is curious that if we could go back in time, we might confront some existential paradox that would cause us to not exist now.  For instance, if a person goes back to a time before his father was born and say kills his grandfather, he would not exist and could not go back into the past to kill his grandfather.  So one might say he would not be able to go back in the past and effect anything of his personal past.  This is the paradox that presents itself in the fantasy films Back to the Future and the romantic film Somewhere in Time.  We watch these films, but I wonder whether we actually see the paradoxical nature of time travel into our own past. 

It is quite obvious that we cannot go back and correct the mistakes of the past.  We might be able to go back into the past as observers, but we would not be able to do anything about the past which would alter the present.  We clearly could not go back into the past and effect a change which would prevent us from going back into the past.  In this sense the past is necessary.  We cannot alter it, it has already occurred and we are unable to change it.  It is what it was and it is not possible for it to be anything other than what it has been.  

On a more personal level we cannot go back and correct our errors and mistakes of our own past  We might regret them, but we cannot correct them in the past  The best we can do is to make amends for them or in the present act in such a way as to mitigate the effects of our errors, in short mend our ways and our fences and broken bridges too.  But doing so requires action in the present and future.  If we alter our behavior in such a way that we no longer commit those errors, we must continue such action throughout the future.  In other words correcting the mistake of the past must result in that mistake never again occurring. 

Time and time again we fail to do this, because it is extremely difficult.  Those we injure by our errors might not accept our mended ways and we might not ourselves forgive those who have in some way injured us.  We are often reluctant to forgive, but that is the capacity each and everyone of us has to effect the future and mitigate the effects of past errors and mistakes.  In this sense to seek forgiveness is virtue, and seeking forgiveness involves altering our present and future to mitigate the effect of a necessary past.