If you were forced to relive one year of your own life, of your choice, in a loop, possibly forever, what year would you choose? Why?
It can be any period of 365 consecutive days, starting on any day of the year you choose.
Otherwise, Groundhog Day movie rules apply: you can’t die, dying will just cause you to wake up on the first day of your year, you don’t age, you can alter events currently but everything resets at the end of the last day of the year, you retain all of your memories but nobody else does, etc.
Trying to decide between a year that was actually really good, or a year that was disappointing that I’d like to “fix.”
While the latter is probably more satisfying, I don’t think I’d want to be fixing stuff repeatedly forever.
OTOH, even the greatest year of my life would eventually get boring, and I wouldn’t want to sully those memories.
I guess it’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation either way. But then again, if one approaches it with a positive attitude, as Phil eventually does in the movie, it doesn’t much matter what year you choose.
I’m going to go with a year that was really good, but also had a lot of potential to be better: my first year out of college, 1998. It’s that magical time when you have all the privileges of adulthood and almost none of the responsibility. I had a decent job with my own health insurance, a car, I was still on my parents’ car insurance, I was sharing a house with what are still my 3 closest friends and paying only like $200 rent, it was awesome. But I was also still pretty inept with women, and knowing what I know now I know I’m certain I would do a lot better in that arena.
Additionally, my childhood dog was still alive. It was one her last years, but it was her last really good, fully healthy one. I’d like to see my grandmother again, but she passed when I was 13 and I’d really rather not have to be a minor forever.
a) It won’t seem like a repeat to me. With luck it won’t seem like a repeat to me no matter how many times I do it.
b) It will seem to stretch forever instead of feeling like a short tight loop.
c) I’ll be surrounded by lots of joyful people who are quite delighted by me.
d) It will have its share of frustrations and failures but not the kind where I’ll spend time blaming myself or internalizing a sense of myself as inadequate.
The current one. That ensures that I have access to the biggest possible archive of creative work. Day 1: go to a bookmaker and bet on a 10 game accumulator, days 2-365 be rich enough to do what I want.
This whole scenario sounds hellish but if forced to choose I’d probably go with my last year at university, or possibly the second-to-last. Neither were a terribly happy year but with multiple attempts and the opportunity to correct stupid mistakes, either could have been.
This is going to sound sappy but I met the love of my life a couple of years ago and I feel like the rest of our lives together is just starting so the year I would pick hasn’t happened yet.
I was in fantastic shape and had a great job. I did well with women since I was fit and rich and that was also the year I started dating my wife. There are lots of ways that year could have gone as well as it did and very few ways I could screw it up. I could probably make several hundred iterations without getting bored in the least.
I’ll pick one about eight years ago or so. I had a female friend who I was in love with, who didn’t return the affection but was still hanging around with me on a regular basis out of, apparently, a lack of better options. (She didn’t get out much, except with me.) It was going nowhere for obvious reasons, but it was fun for all concerned. Ever since she decided she needed to shit or get off the pot regarding marrying somebody sharing her religious proclivities and we broke off contact my life has carried on okay, but it’s not as fun.
From November 1st of my sophomore year to October 31st of my junior year in high school. I was very happy at that time and it was the last full year my parents were alive.
Without any expectation that I’ll ever return to the present? Probably Sept 2002-Sept 2003. That’s when I started graduate school, and in the summer of 2003 I went on a study-abroad trip in Europe. That was a LOT of fun that year- no real responsibilities, plenty of money (at least at that point), and I was still relatively young looking (I was 30 at the time).
There is a lot of opportunity there to relive stuff, do alternate stuff, riff off the European trip, do a different study abroad, etc…
But why would you settle for “correcting mistakes”? Make yourself a fortune on day 1, be stinking rich for a year. You can basically go anywhere and do almost anything. Sure after a million years of that, it would probably be a nightmare, but that’s true of almost any afterlife scenario too.
Great year I’d love to relive : 1999. I was just getting started as a working adult, had my own place, met some wonderful people and had all kinds of fun. Allowing me to correct a mistake I made in the very last weeks of that year would be a plus.
Not-good-year that I’d like to improve : 2001. There’s at least one decision I made based on vanity that March that I’d want to correct, just to see what “the road not taken” would have looked like. Plus, there were also quite few frankly disappointing moments that I could have handled much better.
The day I finished my Navy commitment and was honorably discharged. Not that I hated the Navy, but just the incredible sense of freedom – I had saved up lots of money, had a truck and a motorcycle, and I could go just about anywhere and do anything. And I was single and in my late 20s. It was a great year as it was… knowing what I know now, it could be even better.