How different would my life be if that one specific thing had never happened? Where would I be today? I often find myself reflecting on my past, sometimes even wishing I could change a thing or two. I recently broke my leg in October of last year, and for months I regretted my choices that day. I wished I could go back in time and stop myself from the freak accident.

Though I am only a few months older now than I was then, I realize that this is a dumb thought to have. Sure, we have regrets. We're human. I'm not saying it's not okay to wish we could change things. However, this is ultimately wasted effort. Though there have been experiments or hypotheses regarding time travel, nobody has successfully found scientific proof that we can go back in time. If this even were remotely possible, all depictions of time travel in the media show that if the past is tampered with, even in the slightest, the rest of the future becomes extremely different (and usually, it's not for the better).

So assume you have a time traveling device. Yes! Your first thought is to go back in time to the day that you felt was the worst in your entire life. A day that was so embarrassing or traumatic that it will haunt you for the rest of your life. Picture that day in your mind: something as miniscule as as sweating through your dress clothes right before your big interview to something as horrifying as a near death experience resulting in an injury. Imagine going back in time and changing those events, or somehow preventing them from happening. You do so successfully and sigh contently. Everything is fine and dandy, so you return to the present only to find that something had gone horribly wrong.

Your present is nothing like you remembered. Where is your family, your beloved pet, your closest friends? Your entire world is in shambles, quite literally, with every building around you burnt to the ground and no sign of civilization anywhere. Suddenly, you're tackled by someone wearing a ski mask as he hisses at you, "What on earth are you doing? The dictator is going to see you outside and she will quite literally murder you!" You gulp nervously and follow this mysterious masked figure to an obscure basement where he explains everything you had questioned upon returning to the present.

The Dictator, or so she's called, has created a government based on the principle of absolute rule. Nobody gets a say in what goes on except for her. The citizens of your once beloved home now live in fear: they don't even go outside anymore. Everything they do is for the benefit of the Dictator. Upon further inspection, you realize the Dictator is the woman who interviewed you for the job that day. Originally, you showed up to the interview a nervous wreck with visible sweat stains on your clothes. She smiled warmly, understanding. You showed promise as an employee and she hired you despite your poor image of yourself. You felt as if she did it out of pity, so you did not accept the job. However, once you went back in time and stopped yourself from going into the interview covered in sweat, everything changed. You still got the job, but you quickly excelled and this made the woman who interviewed you jealous. She grew extremely nervous that you were going to take her job because of your fast success, so she rose to power and eventually became the angry, spiteful ruler that you encounter in the present. She never would have become this way if you had never gone back in the past and changed that minor detail.

Okay, obviously I'm slightly exaggerating, but my point is that dwelling on the past reaps no benefits. It already happened, it can't be changed. And truth be told, why would you want to change your past? Sure, you may have been upset or embarrassed, but consider the person you are now. You are wiser because of that negative situation. Again, return to the incident of the job interview. From that, you learned how to remain calm under pressure, which helped you with every interview you had after and you landed an amazing job thanks to what you learned from your failure. An insightful teacher of mine once instilled in us the message, "Failure is your teacher." He couldn't have been more correct.

I return to the day I broke my leg. For weeks, months even, I wished it had never happened. It brought on so many struggles for me, both physically and emotionally. However, if I had never broken my leg, I would have never overcome the funk I was in before I got hurt. I was extremely depressed and isolated when I first moved into college. I didn't do anything to actively fix my situation and often blamed the world for problems that were nobody's fault but my own. I even considered quitting school and moving back home, it was that bad.

Once I broke my leg, I had an epiphany. I realized that there are far worse things that plague this planet. My bone would heal. My time in college would get better, and I was not alone. Almost all freshmen have that crisis where they feel like everything they do is wrong. Once I achieved an internal locus of control and started taking responsibility for my actions, I became happier. I let go and let God do his work. The Serenity Prayer reads, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and Courage to change the things I can." Once I took on this mindset, things immediately started looking up for me.

So while I did experience an extremely hard time, I got through it. It taught me so much about myself. I am stronger because I failed. My failure made the successes that followed

so much sweeter.