In my formative years I had an obsession: time travel. I wanted my own personal Doc Brown to build me a time machine out of DeLorean. And long before the advent of Netflix, I had a TV show that I binged the old fashioned way. Commercials and all, beholden to whatever programming block or marathon was running, there was one TV show that I just couldn’t get enough of. The journey’s of Sam and Al felt like my own. Of course, I am talking about Quantum Leap. Here’s the basic premise, courtesy of its narrator:

“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top secret project, known as QUANTUM LEAP. Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Doctor Beckett, prematurely stepped into the Project Accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own. Fortunately, contact with his own time was made through brainwave transmissions, with Al, the Project Observer, who appeared in the form of a hologram that only Doctor Beckett could see and hear. Trapped in the past, Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right, that once went wrong and hoping each time, that his next leap will be the leap home.”

What was it about Quantum Leap that made me so obsessive? Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell were solid in their roles but they’re not exactly DeNiro and Pacino. The show is an enduring cult hit and I don’t think it’s because it simply touched all the bases as well as it did. It’s because of the possibility it presented: that one might be able to go back and fix things for both themselves and others. I’ve written before about taking leaps forward but what of those leaps we take backward, traversing through our mindscape, where we tackle those what ifs? What if I had done this differently? What if I had said this differently? What if I refrained from doing these things altogether? What if I’d done something totally different? The possibilities are endless, even though they reside entirely within my head and I can’t actually change anything.

There is no quantum accelerator for me to jump into and take this great leap backwards to actually fix anything, so I have to do this a little differently. I am less like Bakula’s Sam Beckett in that I can not actuate any change that will have some sort of ripple effect. I’m more like Stockwell’s Al, an observer from my own time. There’s something to a detached observance of one’s own life though, isn’t there? If I can objectively take a look back at the things I wish I could change, maybe it could have a positive impact on my future in other ways.

We’re offered chances in this life. Second and third ones, sometimes even fourth and fifth ones. We’re also presented with new opportunities, some of which bear a resemblance to the opportunities that we’ve let pass by. How does one navigate this correctly if they don’t reflect on what they did the first time around? If knowledge is indeed power then it must be the knowledge one has of their self that gives them the power they seek over their own lives. That power can not be attained by simply going through the motions. It can only be found once we take that leap back to one time or another where we were taught a lesson that we haven’t taken the time to learn.

Maybe I’m thinking too much about the possibilities presented by a TV show that was cancelled when I was 8 years old. Pop culture does this. Its influence over our thought processes is unparalleled. But maybe there’s something to this. Each day I seek change. Each day I work as hard as I possibly can to that end. Each day I wake up feeling like a new person. It’s still me but each day I feel different, in a good way. A way that reflects my willingness to now take some leaps forward.

Each day I wake and realize just how difficult this all is. It’s not going to stop me, but one might as well be honest about the challenges they’ll be facing.

Each day I wake up wondering which leap will be my last, having finally found my “home”, whatever that is.

Each day I wake and look in the mirror and say:

“Oh boy”