What if you were able to travel back in time and visit your younger (and more vibrant) self? I’ve often thought about this and won­dered if my younger self, at 6 or 7 years of age, would think the older or future ver­sion of myself turned out okay. I know grow­ing up I was very trust­ing of strangers, maybe too much now that I think about it, but not to the extent where I’d jump in their car at the flash of candy.

Grow­ing up I was mostly a home­body, but on occas­sion would travel around the neigh­bor­hood with my pack of friends. Okay, let’s be hon­est, my group of two or three friends. What would hap­pen if on one of these ram­buc­tious, youth wan­der­ing days I’d come across a man in his mid-20s, blonde hair, 6 feet 2 inches. Upon first impres­sion I’d notice the man was clean shaven and looked pleas­ant enough, unlike those strangers you see in ele­men­tary school videos; droopy eyes, beer gut and blood drip­ping from their sharp­ened teeth.

Then I won­der how, if it were pos­si­ble to time travel, would my future self find my younger self? In the movies, this is a rel­a­tively sim­ple process because it seems the main char­ac­ter always remem­bers where he or she was in their past lives. In real­ity, I would think this would be dif­fi­cult espe­cially if you had no rec­ol­lec­tion of your time­line, that is where you where at this such and such time. The only way I can think of to approach your younger self is to lit­er­ally stalk your past fam­ily. Nat­u­rally, you’d most likely remem­ber where you lived so it would just be a mat­ter of camp­ing out in front of your past house and then wait­ing, lurk­ing, look­ing creepy as ever.

After I real­ize that the only way I’d be able to approach my younger self would be by stalk­ing my fam­ily in the past, I tend to let that thought dis­s­ap­ate. My thought, some­what mixed up in this long expla­na­tion, is would my younger self approve of the future ver­sion of myself? 

Kay Whit­more, for­mer CEO of Kodak and friend of the fam­ily, was one of the many guests at our wed­ding two years ago. As you may have heard in the media, he passed away yes­ter­day at Rochester Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal from com­pli­ca­tions of leukemia. He had only been diag­nosed four weeks ago.

Mr. Whit­more spent 36 years at Kodak, even­tu­ally suc­ceed­ing Colby Chan­dler as CEO in 1990. He climbed the lad­der of suc­cess, but was fired — by the Kodak board — three years later after the abrupt depar­ture of Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer Christo­pher Stef­fen of whom he clashed with numer­ous amounts of times, over the pace of the company’s restructuring.

Accord­ing to Bloomberg.com, “The board, in oust­ing Whit­more, cited the need for deeper and faster cost cuts than Whit­more was will­ing to make.” Whit­more was replaced by George Fisher of Motorola, Inc. to expe­di­ate the tran­si­tion to dig­i­tal media.

David L. Swift, Whitmore’s exec­u­tive assis­tant at the time, sums up the decency of White­more in say­ing that “Every­one rec­og­nized the needs to cut costs… Kay could have caved in and rode along, but he believed in doing what was best for the company.”

And with that, I offer my con­do­lences to the Whit­more fam­ily and remem­ber­ance for a decent soul.  

Ray Bradbury’s infa­mous novel, Fahren­heit 451 tells the tale of a soci­ety where fire­men start fires instead of extin­guish­ing them and where peo­ple watch exces­sive amounts of tele­vi­sion instead of open­ing a book.

Which got me think­ing of how close this work of fic­tion resem­bles our soci­ety. Granted, our fire­fight­ers don’t start fires but the bulk of our soci­ety has re-directed their inter­ests else­where. Instead of open­ing a book or enjoy­ing the seren­ity of nature, peo­ple would much rather chat online or surf the Inter­net. Our world is one filled with fiber-optics, high-definition tele­vi­sion and ergonomic com­puter chairs.

I often think what it would be like to travel back in time to an era with­out these mod­ern con­vien­ances. To step into a time machine and step off onto the plains of a wide-open prarie or a dusty West­ern town, when peo­ple trav­eled by wag­ons and read by the light of the fire. Where sun­sets spread across the skies like wild­fire in per­fect clar­ity, before pol­lu­tion began to form.

Then I stop and think about the amount of dis­ease that existed in that era — how the aver­age lifes­pan was no more than 42 years of age. How most of those indi­vid­u­als that trav­eled by wagon led a gru­el­ing pace across the desert in search of a new home and in the process lost loved ones.

Yet, with any­thing there are trade­offs. Advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages to every compromise.