regressing in age--how would you feel?

[MrBob]

In the Peter vs. Caspian topic in the PC Movie foruim, there was a short discussion about how you would feel if you were suddenly thrust back to a younger age ala the Pevensies in LWW.

First, let me say that I have given this a lot of fantasy thought, imagining myself (and one other person) living happily before we were zapped back to a cetain point in time with all of our knowledge intact of both the future where we lived and the present (I have a story about that going called "The Preventable Year" as well as another still in my head that strongly resembles an episode of "ST: Voyager")

Anyway, I would love going back in my own time. I would love to return to being 9 or 10, especially knowing what I know now. I woul be guaranteed to get straight As. I had fun as a kid and I thimk I could have even more fun again. Of course, I woild miss the technology of today, but I could still have plenty of fun.

Anyone else love to go back to a certain age and relive their lives as the Pevensies did? Anyone not want to?

MrBob

[iminlovewithedwardcullen]

Id love t go back to just days at times and do them over so i didnt do certain things that come back to haunt me, but i dont think i could ever stay in that time...

[Animus Wyrmis]

I think a couple things would influence my decision. We're going back *lots* of years, right? The difference between an adult and a preteen? I mean, do we keep all of our memories? Do they get muted? What about stuff that would seriously screw with you? For instance--abstract geometry! The part of your brain that thinks abstract geometry doesn't develop until...oh, sometime after puberty (I'm not sure how long. But certainly most six-year-olds wouldn't have it). So...how does that work? Where does that knowledge *go*? If you've fallen passionately in love and gotten married and you regress to five, where does *that* knowledge go? You can't...hold it, can you? I mean, someone that's had children and regresses to a very small child--there's some traumatic knowledge there. Someone who's fallen in love and married...am I still going to want to sleep with my spouse? Wouldn't that seriously traumatize my four-year-old self, or whatever?

Anyway, I feel like if I had the vague experiences but without the feelings (like, um, muted?), then I would just be very confused and sort of disquieted. If I had all the memories and feelings totally with me, I don't know how I could handle it! I can't imagine being treated like a child again--I can't imagine having to relearn long division--I would just be so bored. OTOH, if it's just a few months or a year...that's a lot of good I could fix, I think (ignoring the time loop issues). If I had to do it a la the Pevensies, then I would basically be the sole survivor of a catastrophic event (everyone I know is dead!) combined with guilt (I abandoned them!) combined with age issues. And I think that would be absolutely horrid.

[Ephinie]

I think I am still young enough that the idea of going back and being a child again is not something that I would appreciate - at least not at this time in my life. I wouldn't mind going back and re-living college. :) Granted, that wasn't that long ago. I only graduated three years ago, but I still had enough fun that even dealing with all the papers and homework would be worth living those four years again - ESPECIALLY since, if I have all the knowledge of now, all of the work would just be review for me. Actually, though, I really enjoyed most of my work when I was in college, and I enjoy going to classes. Plus, I went through some pretty hard times in college, trying to grow up and figure a lot of things out all at once. If I could go back and re-live those years having already figured it out, I would be able to really have a lot more fun.

But to be sent back to when I was nine or ten years old? No. I couldn't do it. If it was forced on me, I would learn to make do; and I would try my best to make the most of it. However, I highly suspect that one of the first things I would do would be to try to get myself placed in child protective services so that I simply would not have to deal with all the coming turmoil that I knew would happen in my family. Then again, knowing how strong my sense of family obligation still is, I doubt I actually would do that. However... re-living my childhood, especially knowing what would happen and having the knowledge I have now, would make the benefits that can be gained from having a second childhood not even close to being worth the cost of it.

(and I got straight A's in school the first time around, so re-doing all that early school work would only be tedious to me).

[Dragonchild]

I would want to go back to before I was born to say properly good bye to my twin brother who died in utero.
Perhaps everything that came after would have been more bearable then.

[Celebrion Seregon]

Depends...I'm an old soul...and I often think how would It be if I actually acted my age...so for me to go back to an age where I actually acted my age, it would throw me back to a terrible time in my life and I wouldn't want to do it.So I'd just stay as a 30 year old in a 15 year old body.

[lieke]

No, i would NEVER ever want to go back. You know, of course at times you think 'i wish i could re-do that', but think of all the practical consequences.

For the Pevensies it was easier than it would be for us, since they went back to England, and in England they never were older anyway. If they would have grown up in England, and then go back to their younger selves, i think it would be harder than it was now.

But think about it, i'm 17 now, if i would, say, go back to when i was 9... If i lost the knowledge i gained in the last few years, except the knowing of being older, that would be horrible. If you keep all your experiences and knowledge, then it would be horrible still, knowing that you were older once, and having to deal with kids now. Being put in classes with 9 year olds, no one believing you, no one respecting your opinion, since you're 'just a kid'. Losing your friends (maybe, but i would surely be in shock if one of my friends would lose half their age). Having to live through puberty again. Being the size of a dwarf...

The difference is, maybe, that i can only speak from going back from my just-after-teenager years to childhood. Those are the years you develop the most. Maybe it's different if you would, say, go back from 50 to 30. But then you'll likely have a husband/wife or kids to deal with too, and a job.

I would love to go back for just a day or two, see how things were back then, but living 8 years of my life over again? No thanks!

[EveningStar]

I look at it this way. It's a shame the Pevensies died so young, and yet they lived a reasonably long life and got to do a lot of interesting things. So they definitely weren't as cheated as many of the people that attended their funeral might have thought.

I thought it very insightful of Lieke to note that they didn't have to redo the SAME years because they grew up once in Narnia and once in England, so that added a bit of variety.

I'd be supremely uncomfortable redoing my youth, even knowing what I know now. For one thing it's hard to be a responsible adult and go back to being told when to go to bed and what to eat for supper. For another thing, it's tough to know in advance who would win the elections and basically most of the major news stories. The only reason I would do it is to spare the people I love the fallout of some of my mistakes in life. That's not to say I might not make new ones to replace some of the old ones, but I'd be a lot more mature about what I did and didn't do, and I'd find high school algebra and geometry a piece of cake which is also good.

[Sven-El]

Actually, in some ways I feel I have gone back to being a child again, at least metaphorically.

I graduated from college over a year ago. It was the high time of my life. I learned a lot, grew a lot, and my believe in God and my ideas of Him just grew. I found the firends I had always been searching for and a mentore who nurtured me not just academically, emotionally, and spiritually . College for me, was my Narnia.

Now, I'm back home, living in my parent's basement. Most of life back home seems to have stayed still so much so that it hardly seems like I left, like England. In a lot of ways I have to go back to being the boy I was before I went to college. All I learned, all I experiecned, everything is left at the door to my house.

It makes matters worse that a lot of my relatives treat me like I am some kind of kid. They act like I'm stupid and imply that college was the biggest waste of time ( mostly as I majored in literature intead of a subject that coule guarantee money.) My life-long dream of being a proffesional writer is laughed at and seen as childish, just a sit was before I left.

Other times, at my other job I work at ( I work at a video store) I have to pretend I'm an idiot around costumers. My college degree deosn't matter. My intelligence doesn't matter. To them I am a cold, souless drone, with no brain that they can degrade, much like the bullies from forth grade till early High School.

Fact is, though I don't want to regress, I have to. In order to get a long with every one around me, I have to act like the four years I spent in college never happened.

So in some ways as I said, I know what it's like. It's hard to have to be "less" then what you've become and revert back to an earlier stage of life.

Oddly it's that aspect of Narnia that resonates with me the most.

[MRW]

How did I miss this thread? I remember the first time I read LWW, I thought it was so unfair that the kids had to go through puberty again, because that was one of the worst times of my life. Fortunately, as Lieki said, the Pevensies weren't in danger of changing their "future" by making different decisions, because they were going to have their second adulthood in England instead. But that's a problem that we'd definitely have here.

I wouldn't go back and relive the whole thing. I had severe depression during junior high and high school, and I'd also have to go through cancer and chemotherapy again, and that's not an experience I'm willing to repeat for anything.

Health issues aside, I know I'd also be severly tempted to do certain things differently. I definitely wouldn't date the same people, and I'd probably want to finish high school at the community college instead of the boarding school I went to, but if I changed all of those things, I wouldn't be who and where I am today, so by the time I reached my mid-twenties for the second time, I'd be a completely different person. I wouldn't have any of the friends I have now, which means I wouldn't be in the relationship I'm in, if I hadn't gone to school where and when I did.

If I did choose to go to the community college early, I wouldn't have had the literature professor I studied under, because we came and went in the same years. Without that professor, I probably wouldn't have realized just how much I love literature, and I might not have started writing if it weren't for the friends I had as a college freshman -- people I wouldn't have met if I hadn't gone to the schools I chose in the order I chose and just the time I chose. I'd probably be a math major or an accountant instead of a librarian.

On the other hand, if I could go back for just a short time, it might be fun. If it were regular time travel like in Back to the Future and I could meet myself (without scaring myself) it would be fun to play tricks on people for the day. If I were actually going back to that time and reliving it, that still might be fun for a day or so. I'd just want to be able to pick the day, though I'm not sure which day I'd pick.

[inkspot]

Lieke's point was a good one, as has been noted: the Pevensie's didn't "go back" to childhood from their own lives, they went back from their Narnian lives, so they had no knowledge of the future in England; they had only the knowledge of Narnia they had gained, and all they had learned there. It would terribly hard for me tomorrow to lose all that I have here, as if it had never happened, and then be thrust back to myself as a child knowing all the love and joy I've felt here as an adult woman with a beloved husband, two great step-daughters and my friends, career, etc. will never happen.

But of course, the Pevensies brought back with them their dearest relations, their brothers and sisters, so it wouldn't be quite the same, they would not have as much to mourn ...

[SongsofLife]

What a very interesting discussion! I would not go back to any point in my actual life, for all the tea that Mr. Tumnus had to serve. However, the notion of regressing in age, in a different reality...that gives me pause for thought.

[inkspot]

What a very interesting discussion! I would not go back to any point in my actual life, for all the tea that Mr. Tumnus had to serve. However, the notion of regressing in age, in a different reality...that gives me pause for thought.
Yah, that's what I'm saying. It would be like waking up from the most amazing dream, with years of accumulted wisdom in your head, and being able to move into your "real life" with the advantages of that experience. Yes, that I would do.