What an Episode of the Original Star Trek Taught Me
Have you ever seen the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge
of Forever"? If you haven't:
Commander McCoy accidentally makes himself delirious, beams down
to a nearby planet, goes through a portal back in time to the
1930s, and changes history by saving a woman. This causes the
Starship Enterprise to cease existing.
So Captain Kirk and others who followed McCoy to the planet are
stranded and have to go through the portal to save McCoy, stop
him from changing history, and bring back the Starship
Enterprise and their buddies left on board.
They arrive a few days before McCoy, and while there Kirk falls
in love with a social worker, Edith Keeler. But Spock discovers
that in order to repair history she will have to be killed in an
auto accident.
Furthermore, if she lives, she will lead a pacifist movement
that makes the President of the U.S. delay entering WWII. This
will allow the Nazis time to be the first to make the atomic
bomb and take control of the world.
So Kirk has to make a decision: let McCoy save Edith and change
the course of history forever or stop McCoy and save the world
from dictatorship.
Do you ever wonder if history would have turned out the same way
if even one thing had been changed? If one person had lived or
died? If one event had or had not taken place?
History is really mysterious in that way, because you never know
if one minor incident in the whole thousands of years of history
could have had huge effects we never even thought of.
I've realized that the Internet is the same way. It has allowed
us to do business and live life like we never have before.
Without it, where would we be? I'll tell you where I'd be. I'd
be where many people are right now: suffering through a job I
don't want (if I didn't get laid off), with people I don't like,
with hardly any time to do what I really want to do. And
sleepless nights, tossing and turning and worrying about
finances.
I think I've always known that working a job wouldn't be the
right thing for me. As a child whenever anyone asked me what I
wanted to be when I grew up, I couldn't really give them an
answer.
I knew they expected something like "a doctor" or "an
accountant". But I wanted to be "someone with the time and money
to do what I want, when I want".
For me, the Internet couldn't have come at a better time. Fresh
out of college during hard economic times with prices for this
or that going up...it's enough to make me want to go back to
school just so I can delay having to deal with the "real" world.
:)
The Internet provides the best way for the average person to
actually live life, not just go through it or be a slave to it.
You can live life the way you want to without having to worry
about how you're going to pay the bills next month. Or where
your next paycheck is coming from....unless you're lucky enough
to inherit a fortune or win the lottery.
But most of us aren't that lucky, so why let what the Internet
can do for us go to waste? You only have a chance to live this
life once.
And unlike Kirk's situation, it's an easy choice for most of us
to make.
Seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I know I am.