Feb 24, 2022
The philosophy of About Time — Man’s Search for Meaning
Warning: Spoilers ahead for About Time and Man’s Search for Meaning
I confess. About Time, the 2013 romantic comedy about a timid brit (Tim) who learns the men in his family can time travel, is one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s a cute story, explores family relationships in a refreshing way, and ignoring the inconsistent time travel logic, is just a really fantastic watch. But one of my favorite parts is the ending:
“The truth is, I now don’t travel back at all. Not even for the day. I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day to enjoy it as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”
That idea is also brought up in the 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning by psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a book detailing his experience in the Nazi death camps and outlining his theory of logotherapy, which can be well summarized by the title of the book.
In it, the author states:
“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man’s sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life’s finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.”
Are there any other examples of this “live life again” philosophy people can think of?
