I was watching Star Trek yesterday.

I watch Star Trek nearly everyday.

Yesterday, it was The Next Generation variety.

The episode was Tapestry.

Any episode with Q is worth watching, but this episode is probably one of the best they ever did.

The basic idea of the episode is this:

Captain Picard finds himself dead after a phaser blast (or some such thing) makes his artificial heart fail. In the afterlife he is greeted by the apparently omnipotent Q.

Q explains that the reason Picard is a dead is because of the artificial heart, had he still had his human heart he would be alive and well.

Q gives Picard the chance to go back and do it all over again, a chance to avoid the fight with an ugly alien that resulted in him getting a new heart.

Picard suddenly finds himself back in his 20-something self. He’s a Ensign just out of the Academy, out with his best friends from the Academy for one last weekend out, before they go to their first assignments as Star Fleet Officers.

Picard relives the weekend, this time with the perspective of a middle aged, successful Star Fleet Captain. He manages to prevent the fight with the Aliens from happening, and he never gets stabbed in the heart. As a result, he never gets an artificial heart.

Q returns him to the present, and Picard finds that he isn’t Captain of the Enterprise, he is a Lieutenant in Astrophysics who spends his days running reports and analyzing data. He is relieable, but unspectacular. He will never advance beyond this post in this new present.

Q visits Picard one last time. He explains that by avoiding that fight, the young Picard never found his life in danger, never decided to live for the now, never learned to take chances.

Or more simply put, his past, especailly the parts of it that he wasn’t proud of, were intregral to making him into the man that he became.

Q sends him back to his younger self again, this time Picard allows himself to be drawn into the fight, knowing full well that is could cost him his life in the present. Death, he decides, would be preferable to surviving as a man that is a pale imitation of his self.

This episode is great.

I have so many regrets about my past, and watching this episode always reminds me, that what I’ve experienced— good and bad— has made me who I am.

I still have room for improvement. (Lots of room.) But the place for improvement is right here and now, not in wishing that this or that had gone differently.