Once in a magic land, there lived a gifted sorcerer who was as clever as he was talented. If people wanted his help, they had to ask very specifically for what they wanted, otherwise, the rascally enchanter would give them exactly for what they asked, even if it was not what they wanted.
One day, a man who had lost his love to someone else, pined away for the past. He was so surprised when she left him, because he really believed that she loved him and that there was nothing wrong in their relationship. His pain of her leaving overwhelmed him, and he wanted nothing more than to live in the time when they were together. This man was desperate to regain the past, so he sought out the popular magician and asked him, “Please sir, can you help me live in the past? I want to live in the relationship I once used to have.”
“Is that what you really want?” replied the sorcerer.
“More than anything, I yearn for the days when I was with my companion. I want to live in that time again when we were together.”
“Ahh,” sighed the magician. Without a further question, he simply replied, “So be it.”
And in an instant, the man was transported back to a time when he was with his sweetheart. At first, incomprehensible joy overtook him. “It worked!” he thought. And he was happier than he could remember. The joy he felt of being with his love was something of legend, he thought. His happiness beamed through him. Since he still knew the old future, he somehow felt even more appreciative of every moment with her.
He was so happy, that was, until something occurred to him: His love was actually in love with someone else. He knew this now, just as he knew he had returned from the future. He was fully aware that even though he was with her, she actually wanted to be with someone else, and there was nothing he could do about it. Instead of seeing her or their relationship in the way that he imagined it, he now saw it for what it actually was.
Once he began to see the relationship for what it was, rather than for what he once thought it was, he wanted nothing more than to get out of the past. “I don’t want this!” he screamed in his mind, and he again sought out the sorcerer.
“I don’t want to live in the past any longer,” he told the magician, “It is not what I imagined it to be.”
“I didn’t think it would be,” replied the enchanter.
“Then why didn’t you stop me?” the man asked.
“Because it is for each person alone to find out that the past is not what we imagine it was; in our minds in the here and now, the past is a combination of what it actually was mixed with what we wanted it to be. Who could have told you that? To whom would you have listened had you only heard that lesson? No, you had to return to the past to see that you pined for something that did not exist.”
The man put his head down, acknowledging that the sorcerer was right. He knew he had to re-experience this pain just to be free of it, but in his mind he believed the sorcerer was wrong about future lessons. “I will learn from this,” he said to himself, “And I will no longer imagine the past was something other than what it actually was.”
The sorcerer could of course read minds, and heard every word the man thought, so he replied, “That would be wonderful. Truly. If you can learn this lesson that the past is an illusion and not repeat the mistake you just made, that would be a talent. But if you could pass on your wisdom to others without having to make them re-experience the past, well then, your sorcery will have far exceeded mine….”