Since I first arrived in Okinawa more than three weeks ago, I’ve been mildly confused about time. It’s not a case of jet lag, but one of adjusting to the vast difference in time and date between here and my home in San Diego. I lost a full day coming west and crossing the international dateline as we flew over the vast Pacific ocean, but when I return home Monday morning, I’ll gain that day back. I’ll fly out of Okinawa on Monday morning, change planes at Tokyo’s Narita airport, then fly back across the Pacific to arrive the morning on 28th in California! I suppose it’s an opportunity to claim I was able to turn back time, other the yearly routine of setting my clock ahead one hour in the spring and back again in the fall.
I’m not the only one intrigued by the notion of time change. Turning back the hands of time is a subject that has ignited the imagination of filmmakers, singers, science fiction writers, novelists and poets for decades. “If I could turn back time,” pop singer Cher famously belted out in her 1989 hit. Her lyrics may have been inspired, as so many films or works of fiction since, by H.G. Wells’s 1895 novella, The Time Machine, adapted for film, radio and television several times in the decades following its publication. Think of Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, or Bill Murray in the constant replay of Groundhog Day in the film of the same name. Fox’s character traveled to the past in an attempt to influence the outcomes of life in the future. Murray’s, an arrogant, self-absorbed news reporter, was doomed to repeat the same day until he finally began to care about others’ lives. Another journalist who steps back in time is the protagonist in Ken Grimwood’s novel, Replay. After dying of a heart attack in 1988, he awakens as an eighteen year old in 1963 with a chance to relive his life, yet the memories of his next twenty-five years are intact. He continues to replay his life and death, awakening each time back in 1963 before he finally realizes he can’t prevent his death, but he can change the events before it—for himself and for others.
Neil Sedaka’s 1962 hit, “Turning Back the Hands of Time,” became his signature tune and one he performed for many years. Set to Puccini’s “Nessum Dorma”score from the opera, Turnadot, the lyrics echo some of the longing we’ve all experienced when we look back over our lives.
Turning back the hands of time
To see the house I lived in,
To see the streets I walked on,
And there’s the children when they were oh so small,
Step back with me…
And there’s my father,
He’s waving to me gently,
Oh how I miss him.
To touch the face of friends and loved ones,
To hear the laughter and to feel the tears,
What a miracle this would be,
If only we can turn the hands of time…
How many times have you looked back over your life and begun a sentence with the words, “if only I could do it over again…?” Whether regret and the wish you’d done something differently or the longing for a simpler time, a place you loved, or friends and parents you’ve lost along the way, chances are you’ve had those moments of wishing you could turn back time, maybe even alter the outcomes of your present life, giving yourself a change to make different choices than the ones you did.
I imagine I’ll be too tired and jet-lagged from my long flight to take advantage of having two October 28ths in my life this month, but it’s still fun to consider. What if you could turn time back–not just an hour, but any period of time you chose? What point in your life would you replay? Would you do things differently, knowing what you know now? Or would you opt to return to an earlier time and enjoy the memory a time in life you once knew? Begin with the line, “If I could turn back time…” and see where it takes you.