On Not Changing the Past

Toshikazu Kawaguchi's "Before the Coffee Gets Cold."

I was once told that it’s pointless to fantasize about changing the past. That even if a person could rewind time, they would always make the same choices. This made sense to me. Then I thought about it a little more, and felt a bit more resistance. Of course I wouldn’t want to just rewind time. The whole point of going back would be to change something. To revisit a past mistake with my present knowledge. The logic of the statement still stands, though. Where did I get that knowledge from? How would I know that my decision was a mistake, if I hadn’t experienced its consequences? If that choice hadn’t happened, I would be just as ignorant as I was before I made the choice, and if that were the case, I wouldn’t have ever become the wise and regretful time traveler that went back to “correct” my choice in the first place.

It is always interesting to see how authors address the concept of time travel. Most time travel narratives share similar themes. The “butterfly effect” is a common one: small, seemingly mundane events can have massive consequences. One familiar lesson—don’t mess with the past, because the results may be different from what you intended—is seemingly omnipresent. There is utility to these stories. They serve as a reminder to enjoy your life and not dwell on what could have been. To embrace your past choices, even the ones that you aren’t proud of, because they all led you to the present moment.

Of course, there is a certain suspension of disbelief that is required, if you are to enjoy any story about time travel. The technology doesn’t exist, for one, but even beyond that, no author ever seems to really get it perfect. There are always a few logical inconsistencies, one of which being the one I touched on before: how could the “present day” person, the one going into the past, still exist and choose to go back in time after the world was changed by their meddling? How could they still be the same person, the one that made the choice to go back in time, after their timeline has been altered? If little choices have massive consequences, this seems like an impossibility. And if they don’t go back in time in this new timeline, wouldn’t the first timeline, the one in which they were primed for time travel, come back into existence? This eventuality would then compel them to go back in time to change the past yet again. It’s an infinite loop. A paradox. Different stories address this paradox with varying degrees of grace.

I’ve recently encountered a book about time travel that subverts this paradox altogether. It is a Japanese novel, written by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and translated into English by Geoffrey Trousselot, and it breaks just about every convention there is. It centers around a small basement coffee shop, with three clocks on its wall and only one that tells the correct time. One where customers can travel back in time, as long as they follow certain rules. They must stay sitting in one specific chair of the coffee shop (and thus can only meet people who have entered the business), and no matter what they do, the present will not change. They may meet whoever they wish, and say whatever they wish, but nothing that they do will have any physical consequence, because the present will still turn out exactly the same. In addition to this, the traveler has a very limited amount of time. Before they go back in time, they are served a cup of coffee, and they must drink the coffee before it gets cold. Once they do, they will be transported back to the present.

This version of time travel fits in nicely with the concept that I addressed before: that it’s pointless to go back in time (if your purpose is to change anything, that is), because the same events would just happen yet again. Perhaps time is just an illusion—that the entire structure of the universe, past, present, and future, has been laid out already, and we as three-dimensional beings can only perceive it one moment at a time. We’re just gliding through a set structure, along for the ride. Of course, this may not be true, but let’s assume that this is the “correct” conception of reality. If there was one little disturbance in this set structure—say someone traveled to the past to warn someone that died tragically to somehow avoid their death—wouldn’t it make more sense, on a cosmic scale, to just make one small correction, instead of altering the entire fabric of reality from that point onward? Wouldn’t the universe find some other way to ensure the death which was “supposed” to happen?

A question may come to mind then: “what’s the point?” Why would anyone bother going back in time, if they are just going to wind up in the same place anyway? The book answers this question beautifully. So far, we’ve only addressed the material which makes up the universe. Our bodies, our actions, the events which unfold around us. These are all concrete things, which we can see and touch. These cannot change. But what about our thoughts? These live outside the physical realm, and they are infinitely changeable. What I am speaking about now is our consciousness, our “soul.” In the book, one can go back to the past and have a small conversation. This conversation will change very little in terms of the physical world, because this is out of the realm of possibility, but the malleable internal life of the person can be transformed. This little act of going back, inconsequential to the massive universe, is enough to gift the soul with perspective.

A question may come to mind then: “what’s the point?”

The novel states one other rule which I’d like to address. There is danger to going back to the past in the novel, because if someone stays for too long, and allows their coffee to grow cold, they are “cursed” and become a ghost, forced to haunt the coffee shop until another person makes the same mistake and takes their place. I believe this has symbolic significance as well. Do we not become ghosts, shells of the people that we could be, if we choose to live in fantasy, dwelling on a past that we no longer belong to? I believe that the author intended this as a warning: we may go back, we may revisit past events to see them in a new light, but if we dwell too long, we lose ourselves. Of course, this is a choice that many people make in their own lives, and it can be argued that it is one of those unavoidable, predestined choices. But it is a tragic end nonetheless.

I am not sure if this is what the author intended. So much meaning gets lost in the journey that thoughts take from one mind to another. We often assume, when communicating, that we are on the same page as the person that we are talking to. That we are making the same assumptions, that we see reality in the same way. Then, something strange may happen, to show that we are actually miles apart from one another. That we must consciously bridge the gap, if we are to really connect. Some of the most profound moments in the novel are instances of this happening, characters realizing how wrong they actually were about somebody. And in some of the most touching moments, characters intentionally burned this bridge, let someone believe a soothing lie as an act of mercy, and of love. These are things that we do not often think about, but they are some of the most powerful experiences that humans can have. I loved this book for that reason. It reminds its reader to take pleasure in the little, finite moments of their lives, to embrace the sadness that results from the fleeting nature of these moments, and to accept one’s place in this uncertain space between past and future that we inhabit.