Everything matters.

Sometimes you look back and imagine you had a time machine. You'd get in, armed with all you know today (and possibly a judiciously selected almanac or a stack of financial times or two) leap back and make the life you always wanted, correct your mistakes, seize all the opportunities.

It's tempting, isn't it?

See, you know those were mistakes with the benefit of hindsight. If you never made them to begin with... would you have learned from them? Or would every mistake fixed fade out a piece of your memory, like Marty fading from his photo, so you're all set to repeat it a few days / weeks later?

You'd be frantically racing back in time again and again and again, fixing mistakes that keep happening, over and over, wondering why your brilliant plan isn't working, while paradoxes fill your history and your memory turns into swiss cheese.

On the other hand... you can justify. What if you don't fix anything? After all, those were your decisions, even if wrong, and they defined who you are today. You proudly own your errors, stand by your stumbles, proud to be the product of choice...

But what if you've already been back, once, twice, more times?

The One That Got Away is the one you are married to now - will you remember her as TOTGA? The children you decided to have, or didn't. The jobs you stayed in, or quit. The investments made or passed over. Decisions made one way, or another.

What you remember is always going to be the product of those choices, minus the memories made by not taking those other choices.

Doing X produces A.

Doing Y produces B.

You can only do one action, and get that one outcome.

The other will be the road not taken. 

Do X, yearn for B. Vice versa, ad infinitum.

Regret not finding B. Lie awake nights, cursing yourself. Swearing to never repeat that. Leaping at the chance to do the next Y1 that looks like it will get you B1. On and on and on...

Until here you stand today.

Proud.

Looking back at A and B1 as the grand achievements of your life.

Idly lost in reverie - what if B, or A1 had happened instead? Sad? Angry? Drowning in pain, or overwhelmed with relief?

But... A or B don't matter in themselves. They're just how you feel about them. It doesn't matter what they were, you'd feel about them the same way.

So... does anything matter, then? Because whatever you do, it matters. Whatever you don't do, it matters just the same.

Everything matters.