TIME TRAVEL — SEPTEMBER 28 WRITING PROMPT

Time in a Bottle

If given the choice, which time period (past, present, or future) would you like to live in and why?

Holly Jahangiri
3 min readSep 28, 2022

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Photo by Brooke Campbell on Unsplash

While I enjoy reminiscing about the past, I wouldn’t want to live there. It’s static, unchanging — I can read about it in a book and enjoy it again and again through photos. But I can’t travel back in time.

If I could travel to the past, would changing something result in you and me not having a future at all? We all like to think we’d go back in time and kill Hitler before he grew up into an evil adult. I wouldn’t; I would first try to encourage his artistic ambitions. I would tell him that, with practice, he would be one of the greatest painters of the 20th century. So what if he never became that? The encouragement might distract him long enough he’d lose any opportunity to become a murderous dictator. Then again, it might not. I’m glad history doesn’t rest solely on my shoulders.

I’m happy in the present, and I try to be more observant so that I don’t blink and miss all that’s amazing about right now. We talk about living in the present moment, but we can never pin it down. The present is ephemeral and fleeting. The moment is over the minute I type these words. It slips from our grasp again before you…

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