Last week, the local Alamo Drafthouse (and I think pretty much every movie theater, actually) was showing Back to the Future. Since it happens to be one of my favorite movies of all time, and I was too young to see it in theaters when it came out, I decided to go.

If you’re not familiar with the movie, it centers around Marty, a teenager in a fictional California town called Hill Valley. He’s friends with an old, wild-eyed scientist named Doc, who invents a time machine made out of a DeLorean. And… you know what? If you haven’t seen a 40-year-old movie by now, I’m not going to waste time giving you a rundown. Suffice it to say, it’s one of the best, most entertaining movies ever made. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it immediately.

Anyway, the part of the movie that inspired this post comes near the climax (SPOILER ALERT). I’ll give you a hint: “Hey you, get your damn hands off her!”

George, who spends most of the movie being bullied and pushed around by everyone, finally finds the courage to lay out Biff, who’s trying to force himself on Lorraine. It’s one of my favorite movie scenes ever.

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about time travel and what it would be like to go back in time. Interestingly enough, I’ve only ever been interested in seeing things from the 20th century, specifically, the 1950s through the year 2000. I often wonder what it would be like to see the world as it was when I was a kid in the 1980s or to see my parents as young people.

I think that fascination reflects something deeper many of us struggle with. The need to distract ourselves from what’s in front of us and to escape the present moment. For me, at every point in my life, I was either hyper-focused on what the future might bring or nostalgic about the past.

If I were to go back to the year 2000, for instance, the me of today would be thrilled to be there. But the me of then was either worrying about the future or thinking about the past. It’s funny how the me of 2025 can pine for a time when the me of the past was pining for another time.

Of course, the biggest reason to go back would be to see loved ones who have passed. I’d give anything to talk to my mother again, to go back and punch my younger self in the face for not appreciating the time I had with her. To stop being so focused on how she wronged me and just accept her for who she was.

She used to pull me down to give her a kiss when I’d leave, and I’d always begrudgingly do it. If I could go back, the first thing I’d do is give her a big hug and tell her that I love her and that I know she was doing the best she could. Sure, I had my issues with her, but it’s funny how that stuff has faded now that she’s gone.

Anyway, back to the movie. The moment George punches Biff and knocks him out is the moment his character gets a second chance. In the original timeline, Lorraine’s dad hits George with his car. She feels sorry for him and decides to go with him to the school dance. But since Marty pushes George out of the way of the car, it throws off the whole timeline and endangers his own existence.

But that moment—when George sees Biff forcing himself on Lorraine and something inside him clicks—is powerful. For the first time, he decides she’s worth fighting for, even if it means getting his ass kicked. He spends the whole movie afraid he’s not good enough, but in that instant, all of that fades. All that’s left is his love for Lorraine, and he channels it into one perfect punch that changes everything.

The truth is, in real life, we don’t get second chances like that. I’ll never be able to go back and hug my mom or tell her what a self-absorbed piece of shit I was. But I can use that knowledge to live differently now.

For example, recently my dad started coming to the gym with me. He times it so that he gets there when I do, and afterward he takes me out to eat. When he first started doing it, I found myself complaining internally.

He finishes way sooner than I do, so he goes out to the car and waits. My old routine was to do 20 minutes of cardio before and after lifting, but since he started coming, I’ve been skipping my post-workout cardio because I feel bad making him wait. He also likes to go to places like Burger King afterward, which, obviously, isn’t the healthiest choice.

For a while, I caught myself grumbling about it. But then one night, it hit me: there’s going to come a day when I’ll be able to do my full workout again, and you know what day that will be? The day he’s gone, and I never get to see him again.

That thought set me straight in a heartbeat. So what if I can’t get in a full 20 minutes on the elliptical? I don’t know how much longer I’ll have with my dad, but I’m going to spend that time with him and enjoy every moment. Because one day, I won’t be able to. I don’t want to repeat the regrets I have about my mom. One day, that time will end, and I’ll be forced to move forward without him.

This is how I want to live my life now: not freaking out about the future, not obsessing over the past, and not putting off until tomorrow what I should be doing today. We don’t need a time machine to make our future better. We can do that by acting in the present.

You don’t have to change the past to fix the mistakes of the past. You can use your experiences to guide your path going forward. At my gym, there’s a sign on the wall that says:

“Do something today that your future self will thank you for.”

I think about that quote a lot.

Life doesn’t hand out time machines, but it does give us mornings, and that’s close enough. Every sunrise is a clean slate, a reset button, a chance to make today a day your future self will thank you for. You can’t rewrite your past, but you can write the next chapter better than the last.

So, to quote Doc from the third movie, your future isn’t written yet. Don’t you think it’s time you made it a good one?