If you were given a chance to know what happens in your future, would you take it?

Hell, yes, I would. I would very much like to know my future mistakes so that I can correct them before they happen; butterfly effect be damned. Besides, doesn’t the butterfly effect – that even the smallest change in the past can effect the future – only apply to people from the future traveling to the past? I would find it difficult to believe that me flapping my wings back here in the past could really effect the future all that much. Or maybe it could. Great, now my brain hurts from thinking about time travel.

Alright, let’s set aside the time travel aspect of it. Nothing says that I nor someone else from the future is the one who tells me what’s going to happen anyway. I could just magically stumble on the one and only crystal ball throughout the course of history that has ever worked. Let’s say that, contrary to all logic, I find a crystal ball that gives me a glimpse into my own future.

Hm, this theory is taking on more water all the time. Say, for example, the crystal ball shows me a future in which I’m dead. Well, that’s fine and all, but how would I know how and when I died? I wouldn’t be able to avoid it if I didn’t know the exact circumstances of my death.

Instead of actually seeing my future, let’s say this magical crystal ball gives me a cheat sheet summary, e.g. stay in the same job for another five years, win the lottery even though you didn’t buy a ticket like ever, buy one of the smaller Hawaiian islands, breed dragons, live happily ever after. I might like to know that. If I knew, for example, that I had to stay at this job for another 5 years, I could deal with that because it would be a time-ended phenomenon at the end of which lies a life of awesome. I’d put it on my calendar and mark the days.

Conversely, say my crystal ball summary told me that I’d stay in the same job for another five years after which I’d get hit by a bus and die, I’d get the hell out of Dodge in the hope of avoiding that. My future would then be unknown again, hopefully, but at least I’d avoid working at a less than awesome job until the day I died. Shudder.

I’ve never been very good at planning for the future because I’ve never been convinced I’d actually have one. When I was a teenager, I never thought I’d live as long as I have. The odds were good that I wouldn’t, so the future was just something I’d deal with and plan for later. I still sort of think that way, but not as much as I did. So, since I’m not a planner and really have no idea how to plan for a future, it might be nice if I were to see how it all turned out, good or bad, and then act accordingly.