Question: How do people walk around with all their history in their heads?

How does that not drive you right up a tree?

I mean, when I hear a song from my misspent youth, I’m right back in that headspace, full of wistfulness and slight pain, in addition to euphoria and foggy memories that tell me I once lived a far more exciting, albeit not very happy, life.

I love my life now. And I didn’t love my life then. But nostalgia is a funny thing. I guess I want to be like the characters in those time travel books, where the person goes back in time to do things they wish they’d done. But then of course the ending wouldn’t be the same.

What I want is to go back in time, correct and/or relive events WITHOUT IT CHANGING ANYTHING IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW.

Is that so much to ask?

With the technology that has taken over our lives, when even seniors citizens are twittering and the average age of Facebook’s biggest subscribers is over 30 (I just made that up, but you get my point), couldn’t someone figure out a virtual reality where we could go and relive or readjust our memories? I’m talking memory wiping, a la Eternal Siunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I don’t mean The Matrix, where it’s all fake.

Or maybe I do mean that. Maybe I want a part-time Matrix. Something I can plug into when I’m feeling nostalgic, where I can interact with my past WITHOUT RECRIMINATION. Then you could live a little bit of your so-called heyday without the sexually transmitted diseases, hangovers and angst. You could correct all your screw-ups and try anything out with no consequences.

Come on, all you brilliant and socially delayed geniuses at CalTEch and MIT, get on it! PLEASE.