Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

Oddly enough, I’ve put a lot of thought into similar questions. And the ultimate answer is mostly “No”.

What are the constraints of such a thing as “Re-live an age or year of your life”? Are you back in your body from that time? With your current memories intact? Or do you truly get to re-live it, no memories from the present, so you can experience the exact same things all over again in the way they happened?

If it is the latter, is the “re-living” limited to just that window of time and then you go back? Do you retain the memories and feelings from this “second round”, thus amplifying/restoring the memories and emotions from the first time? This setup might be okay for when we’re getting older and forgetting things. This gets a “maybe” from me.

If it was the former, and you basically get your mind sent back in time to inhabit the body of your younger self, then this would be a solid “No”. The reason being you wouldn’t be the same person. Even more so the further back you go to “re-live” a part of your life. In every case, you would have extra knowledge to work with over others around you. But in some cases, especially for those of you who think “Yea, I’d go back to high school and do that over!”, you are making that choice because you want to do things differently, armed with new knowledge and experience that only comes with time. You really wouldn’t be the same person. And the further back in time you go to reach that era of your life, the weirder it gets. You’re an adult inhabiting the mind and body of your younger self, but you’re still an adult. There would be risks, based on your objective. And I’m not talking about just the obvious “bet it all on Google/Amazon and let it ride until it’s worth something” but also alienation.

So sure, let’s revisit high school. Your teachers are going to wise up to your sudden increase of maturity, your ability to work, your sudden lack of interest in things your peers are doing. Your high school love interests would be children, and your level of maturity would (I hope) lead you down a path of showing more interest and attraction to the adults because you realize that romance at that age was incredibly limited and boring. Everything would add up. You’d be putting yourself into a situation where you aren’t “re-living” it so much as you are “re-building” it. And if you weren’t careful, you would be re-building a lot and losing friends along the way.

You can take the same basic logic from the high school example and apply it to just about any age or year you go back to re-live. The further back in time it is for you, the weirder things can get. So just don’t do it.

This thought experiment led me to the conclusion that instead we should make changes to our “here and now” for a better future. That’s why my answer to the initial question is simply “No”.