The Fallacy of Rewinding the Clock
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in an attempt to rewind the clock and deny women their reproductive rights. The argument given was that reproductive freedom was “not deeply rooted in this Nation's history or tradition", nor considered a right. The court (or at least the majority of Justices) believed that our founders would never have approved of the freedoms of choice and privacy that Roe v Wade afforded.
Never mind, our founders wouldn’t have approved of women voting; they certainly wouldn’t have approved of Clarence Thomas being a Justice on the Supreme Court or of his marrying a white woman. The list goes on. Rather than rail against this wrong-headed and misogynistic ruling in this blog post, I’d like us to turn our attention to our individual attempts to rewind the clock.
The Genie Escapes Her Bottle
A friend recently recounted her husband’s wish that she discontinues counseling and reading self-help books because of his notion that she was being influenced in the “wrong direction.” Of course, he was confusing cause and effect. No one enters counseling because everything is grand. His parting shot was “why can’t things stay the same as they were?” Indeed.
Perhaps you’ve uttered this same wish when a change happened that you did not orchestrate. I know that I’ve said a version of that to myself when a friend or loved one has taken ill or died or when a relationship soured. I’ve even thought that when I’ve observed a growing number of homeless encampments and increased gun violence.
Wishing that everything stays the same is to wish for death. The simple truth is that new cells grow and old ones die—organisms are ever-changing. Returning to a previous version of ourselves and previous realties is impossible.
The Bad Old Days
Longing to return to the past is an indication of dissatisfaction with the present. Historical nostalgia is triggered by unhappiness. Psychologist Dr. Krystine Batcho, an expert on nostalgia, says, “If people are unhappy for any reason with how things are today, they're more likely to experience this sense that things must have been better in the past.”
Change is stressful; our default is to revert to nostalgia. But glorifying the past obscures very real personal and societal ills. For those who were/are oppressed by society or in their personal relationships, the good old days were hardly good.
Obscuring the bad old days leads us to engage in make-believe. We sometimes try to get others to cooperate with our fantasy of how things should be. This is an exercise in frustration and futility. And yet, too many of us engage in such fantasies.
Coping With What Is
We may not like our current situations but it’s what we’ve got. We can work on self-improvement while abandoning the urge to control others.
When we feel stressed by change, overwhelm or boredom, we sometimes focus on external causes such as bad jobs, bad friends, bad partners. Bad jobs, bad friends and bad partners exist but sometimes the distress lies within. That’s the first place to look.
I’ve discovered that in my own life, when I place too much emphasis on work or specific individuals to meet my needs, I’m in trouble. To borrow a book title, work won’t love you back. And people disappoint—they may even change and want their freedoms.
So, no, we can’t rewind the clock, try as we might. We can only move forward one step at a time, with great care and attention.
No [wo]man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and [s]he's not the same [wo]man.
—Heraclitus