How About Better Outcomes For One Human?

Yeah, I get it that regrets truly are an exercise in pointlessness.

Still, human nature remains hard to circumvent.

Would that we could all possess iron-clad Vulcan logic.

But alas, ‘tis not to be!

How about hypothetical do-overs? The what if without the what if since our undisciplined minds are going to wander there anyway. Human beings are incorrigible. Can’t help it. Perhaps it’s hardwired in.

Maybe make a game of it. Call it Introspection. Reversal Reflections. Or Backtrack Shenanigans.

Design it as a creative endeavor so there’s some educational benefit and life skills acquisition and stuff.

Market it before special occasions like graduations, weddings, divorces, ceremonies, new jobs, old jobs. Holidays like Labour Day, National Talk Like Shakespeare Day, and National Just Because Day (especially National Just Because Day!) Or a peak season like New Year’s. You know, before the suicide rate goes up for all the things that people aren’t regretting.

A game where people can break the rules or make up new ones in search of the highest development of future self.

Dynamism that allows a role reversal of that customer service agent/client exchange so you didn’t sit there like a good professional taking in all the decibel-defying, vitriolic nonsensical spew from someone that pushed your anxiety levels over the edge, causing you melt into a puddle of what smelled like sewer scum just inside your kitchen door at home hours later. In that hypothetical do-over, you could stand up, shutting that screaming moron up in five different languages. Then, tell your supervisor every which way security needs to be heightened due to workplace aggression or else.

And player two is all about those mouth-watering thangs he didn’t get to eat slathered in gravy, or sauce. Or whipped cream. Just like Mama used to make. Bringing back an era when so much love spilled over the sides of everything, never once did it cross a young mind that second helpings were not a given. The topics that weren’t discussed. Maybe nobody made the connection. Or just wasn’t concerned enough to talk about moderation. And heart disease. Obesity. Diabetes. Stuff kids don’t think about because…they’re busy being kids, not nutritionists! Unaware that patterns are being laid. But now post gastric bypass, player two wonders how or if he could have changed eating habits then, so living didn’t warrant such extreme measures.

The next turn could let the widow in the corner splurge and take that thrilling trek with her husband on an around-the-world excursion instead of posturing that more money should be put aside for the childrens’ education. The kids would become educated anyway. But she’d have enjoyed way more precious memories with her one-and-only plus seen the world to boot. Might have had more children too.

And on the next roll of the dice, I stem the cascade of decisions leading to various animals reaching endangered species status, like the Kakapo of New Zealand or the Partula snail of the Pacific Ocean Islands.

I could use up everybody’s turn reversing climate change. I don’t think ‘everybody’ would mind. It’s difficult to explain how internally hemorrhagic it feels to have remembrance of a planet that looked way different from what is now visible.

Where could I (or you) have stepped from the sidelines calling timeout. Commanding the world’s nations like an omnipotent necromancer. Allowing the masses to glimpse the future, freezing panicked faces that had to see for belief and preventative action.

It would be a gamechanger if the human species were more consistently…humane.

There are atrocities that happen right next door.

A chilling event reminder:

When Kitty Genovese was stabbed, robbed, and raped in 1964 a few feet away from her Queens, New York apartment, an insidiously bizarre thing happened. It was alleged that between 12 to 38 people in the neighborhood saw or heard parts of the brutal attack but did nothing. One neighbour shouted from his window for the attacker to leave her alone and he did. For a while. That neighbor didn’t call an ambulance or police. The attacker returned and continued his gruesome activity on Genovese. She bled to death in the hallway of her apartment building.

Although the accuracy of events in the case have been in dispute, Kitty Genovese syndrome became a sociopsychological term known as the bystander effect. It explains the tendency of a person to be reluctant to intervene and help a victim if other people are around.

I wasn’t yet born in 1964, but I was in the UK when Hurricane Sandy ravaged New York in 2012. In an article by Kirsten West Savali, Kitty Genovese syndrome was applied to Staten Island resident, Glenda Moore. She was a 39 yr. old mother with sons, 4-year-old Connor and 2-year-old Brandon, caught out in the storm when her car stalled. She knocked on a neighbor’s door seeking refuge with her children and was refused. Tragically, waves of water swept the children from her arms. She screamed and begged, knocking on several doors for assistance to help find her children. Literal doors were closed in her face.

The bodies of Moore’s children were found several days later under branches and debris by police who didn’t locate the humane part of humanity that day either.

There are countless stories worldwide like these that I will not retell here. Full of exponential horror and compassion deficient. A disconnect at the root between one living being and another foretells humanity’s ultimate demise by its own hand. No climate catastrophe or virus required.

Something lost along the way?

Yer darn tootin’!

The overriding objective for hypothetical do-overs in the first place.

What was that earlier bit about the highest development of future self?

There’s a future self arriving a minute from now. An hour from now. In a day. A week. Care to get the jump on that?

Mmm hmmm.

Individual as well as collective responsibility awaits us all. Otherwise, I’ll be the scary lady yelling at everyone to play Backtrack Shenanigans with me. You know, so that we can level up on empathy, foresight, appreciation, respect, and love for ourselves and one another.

And yes of course, we can all learn and be character-shaped by making bad decisions and having life kick our butts, but as my Mama always said, “Easy is better than hard.”

Better humans urgently needed.

Apply within.

I really appreciate you taking the time to read this story.

If you would like to read more of my work, feel free to do so here.

I know that it's mighty challenging out there in the world right now. So from one striving-to-be-better human to another, I send you the most peaceful and encouraging of vibrations.

You can always get in touch @thedaniwriter