“You are the inescapable result of your tragedy.” [Brandon Hofer]
After traveling 800 000 years into the future in search of the answer to his question, “why can I not change the past,” Alexander Hartdegen meets a new race of human, the Morlock, who informs him that the reason he cannot go into the past to rescue his fiancé from dying is because he never would have built the time machine if she had not died. He then tells Alexander that he is the inescapable result of his tragedy, meaning that there is nothing he can do to change his past and thus he is trapped.
When I had finished watching the movie “The Time Machine,” that line stuck with me. In the movie, Alexander refuses the hopelessness of being the “inescapable result” of his tragedy and instead chooses to ask the question “what if?” At one point he even says that he is going to change the future.
To hope is to ask “what if?” The moment we no longer believe that what we do has an influence on the future is the same moment that hope is lost. We cannot change the past, but we can change the future. I think we would all “agree” to that statement, but how many of us truly believe it?
Do I live my life wondering why the past cannot be different? Or do I live my life looking for what I can do that will change the future?
Hope is the result of believing that my actions matter in this world. If what I do does not matter, then the only thing left to do is wallow in despair.
You are not the inescapable result of your tragedy.
You are shaped by your past, whether it was tragic or joyful, and every new moment offers you a chance to change what is.
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