Opposite of Always

Jack has the unique opportunity of getting to see how his choices work out, learn from his mistakes, and then do it over based on what he learned. He realizes he wasn’t sent back in time to save Kate, as he’d thought, but to learn important life lessons. Time travel symbolizes learning from and accepting one’s mistakes. Jack’s description of how time travel feels reinforces this symbolic connection. The second lesson he learns is “Time travel hurts” (10). Similarly, facing the consequences of mistakes and learning from them can be very painful. While people who learn from their mistakes still must live with the consequences, they don’t get a do-over. But they have an opportunity to metaphorically undo the mistake by making better choices in the future. Jack’s time travel symbolizes this idea.

One of Jack’s early flaws is a mistaken sense of personal unworthiness based on not being perfect or excelling at every activity. He feels like a failure because he makes mistakes that hurt his parents and friends and because he’s unable to fix the problems they have, which are out of his control. At first, time travel seemed like a way to become perfect and fix everything, including supporting