From time to time I will hear or read an interview of some famous person. One of the common questions asked is, “If you had your life to live over would you do anything differently?” Almost invariably the answer is, “No, I would not change a thing.” On hearing this, in my mind, I am screaming, “Bullshit.”
I look back on my life and there are so many things that I would have changed had I had the opportunity. Maybe it is the programmer in me, but I see life as a 
series of decision points. Like the traveler in Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, go one direction and the other path is usually lost. I do not know a human alive, if they are being honest, that would not own up to bad decisions, to decisions they regret, or wonder what would have happened if they had taken the other branch. I think it is part of the tragedy that is the quiet desperation of human existence. The Buddha gave a way out, living in the moment. However, that is much easier said than done.
One of my fantasies is to wonder what would happen if I could go back and change x to y. What would have my path have been? Would it just have lead to a different series of bad decisions and tragedies? Or would it have been the potion that made my life magical. Or would it in effect just have been neutral, same old shit, different treatment plant?
Then I wonder what if I could get my life in a loop like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. But instead of day, I could live a portion of my life, and if I realized it was not a good path, rewind to a decision point and try a different reality. Do you think after a zillion million tries you could ever get your life where it was perfect? My money is on not.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost