I've kept in touch with a man who no longer posts here. In a recent email, after exchanging the ways that we were both deprived of a healthy childhood/adolescence since we were both raised in the truth, he made the statement that anything done differently back then would have produced a different him now; and since he likes the person he is now, not all of what happened in his past was for no good.
I've thought (and said) the same thing myself. It's a truth I have a hard time arguing with every time it comes to me.
His comment made me think—again—of an episode of one of my all-time favorite TV shows that first aired almost ten years ago. I have no way of knowing if there are any Trekkers out there, but if there are you will likely remember the Star Trek: Next Generation episode entitled "Tapestry."
Captain Picard died from an electrical shock that short-circuited his artificial heart. He meets Q in the hereafter, freezing that instant of time that comes just before we slip off into oblivion. Q queries Picard and offers to give him a second chance – of sorts. He allows Picard to revisit the incident in his young manhood that led to him getting a heart replacement to begin with; back to the time he was a cadet at the Academy...
There was a bar in a lonely outpost.
Picard and a couple of his buddies were hanging out, minding their own business, just having a good time among themselves. In walk some bad-asses, wanting to start some trouble. In a card game Picard's best friend is cheated by one of these heathens and they scheme to get even. Picard rigs a table that allows his friend to win and their duplicity is discovered. Picard is stabbed during the fracas that ensues.
Freeze frame.
Q asks Picard, older and wiser now, if he'd do anything different. Picard is truly sorry, not for his death, but for the brash cockiness he often showed when he was young—the self-confidence that bordered on arrogance. "I didn't know," he said. He regrets... not that he died, but that he was such a 'bad' person. Yes, if he could, he'd be more tolerant... more reserved... a little more cool a lot more often.
"Fine," says Q. "So be it."
In an instant, Picard is whisked back to that moment, decades earlier. Once again he's in the bar at that lonely outpost with his buddies—hanging out, just having a good time. There's something different this time, however. This time Picard has the wisdom borne of decades of living. He's not as arrogant, not as cocky, as he was the first time around.
Like a bad case of déjà vu, some bad-asses walk in, spoiling for a fight. This time, Picard, knowing the outcome, disregards their insults. To the chagrin of his mates he takes the diplomatic approach. Sure enough, they avoid the fight and Picard isn't stabbed as before. He keeps his real heart, but will pay a heavy price just the same.
Unknown to him right then, with this alteration of the tapestry that is his place in the cosmic stream, his life has already been irrevocably altered. He tinkers with yet other past events in this second go 'round, further altering the path this alternative life is taking.
Where he's headed is unclear but one thing is certain – his track toward captaincy of a Galaxy class Starship is undone. His newly found diplomatic skills—rather than the former daring and self-confidence he readily showed—alerts all who know him that his assets can best be used in a middle management position.
[Q fast-forwards this alternative life...]
Picard finds himself once again on the Enterprise, but this time he's not the Captain but a low-level lieutenant with no hope of ever commanding a star ship. In the course of his duties he finds himself on the bridge for a few brief moments, a place where he knows he belongs... if he had only been more bold... back at that lonely outpost long ago... when his career became unhinged.
His 'new' life as a lowly junior officer comes as a direct result of the changes he made when he was younger. Deeply depressed, he talks to a couple of crewmates he formerly commanded – Riker and Troi. Now, in this altered life, they are his superiors.
He opens up, tells them that he feels he has it in him to lead – to perhaps even be a Captain one day. They admire his ambition but confirm that while he is a competent junior officer, there is nothing that stands out as special about him that would warrant such grand delusions. He's wasting his time, dreaming a foolish dream.
Freeze frame.
Back in the misty haze that started the hour—the afterlife—Picard sees in a moment of bitter clarity that it was the man he was then, with all of his flaws, that led him to eventually rise to command the Federation's premiere space vessel – the U.S.S. Enterprise. He realizes that kicking himself all those years for the 'bad' person he was was pointless.
At last, he comes to peaceful, accepting terms with the man he was then... and the man he is now. He asks, begs, Q for help. He would rather die striving for greatness by utilizing all of his unique gifts rather than live out his life in dismal obscurity. In the clutch, Q does not let him down.
As the episode reaches its wonderful conclusion, Captain Picard awakes in the infirmary, to the relief of his subordinates.
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For regular network TV, that one episode is one of the most profound, most life-affirming sixty minutes I've *ever* seen. It left me in tears. I place its capacity to heal, to help me personally come to peaceful terms with my past, on the same level as the movie A Beautiful Mind and The Truman Show.
Would we be in a different place if we could go back and make changes in the things we said and did back in grade school? Junior high? High school? Would we be different people all together? Would we be much better off... or far worse?
Tapestry. Like a cloth woven of many threads, we are who we are right now because of all that's gone before. I can live with that.