Prompt 9
(from Chapter 1: Time and Place):
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned from studying your own past experiences? Would you consider teaching that lesson to others? Why or why not?
Answer:
The most important lesson I’ve learned from my past experiences is that you cannot change the past because it’s over there, in the past. Where you can’t change it. Yesterday will never come back. You can keep waiting like a faithful dog on the porch, wagging your tail, knowing master will be home any moment but he’s not coming back because he is gone, baby. Gone. Because your master is the past.
Unless you have access to a time machine. That changes everything. If you have a time machine then you’ve got the equivalent of a giant erase button on every mistake or ill-considered decision you’ve ever made. Of course you’ll probably screw up history in the process and inadvertently lead to the creation of an army of Hitler clones and you just know that’s not going to end well (unless you’re a Hitler clone).
So the most important lesson I’ve learned from my past experiences is that I can’t learn from my future experiences because they haven’t happened yet. No, that’s not the mot important. Actually, it’s probably barely in the top five.
The most important lesson is that you can’t change the past. And if you could, you probably shouldn’t (because Hitler clones).
Would I consider teaching this lesson to others? I just did.
Class dismissed.
[spoiler title=”Explanation of this exercise” icon=”plus-circle”]These are prompts featured in 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2 (Goodreads link). My intent is to write ultra-short stories that are no more than a few paragraphs long, working through the prompts in order. When I am done I will perhaps have a party of some sort.Sometimes the short stories will be longer and sometimes instead of a story I will answer the questions (most of the prompts are in the form of questions).[/spoiler]
