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In the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a TV series that ended in 1994, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is thrust between three different time periods of his life, trying desperately to save all of humanity.
One moment he would be in the present day. Suddenly he'd be hurled into the past when he first became skipper of the Enterprise. Soon he would be thrown forward to when he's an old man retired from Starfleet. And back he would go to the present again. The switching from time period to time period was sudden and constant during the episode.
It's actually quite compelling. At one point the captain is taken all the way back to the birth of life on earth, when the very first two amino acids were to connect.
But because of some "spatial anomaly" inadvertently caused by Picard in the future--an anomaly that is growing larger as it goes back in time-the amino acids don't connect and life as we know it never begins and of course then never evolves.
Thus humanity is not destroyed per se, it is simply blinked out of existence because life never happened.
Even if you don't like Star Trek, this episode was really good and critically acclaimed TV.
But to my point...
When Picard is thrust into the future he has the opportunity to see what life was going to look like for him and his crew twenty-five years hence.
It was not as pretty a picture as one might hope.
Deanna Troi, the ship's counselor, is dead. Riker, Picard's first officer, and Worf, the Klingon head of security, had had a rift at some point that destroyed their friendship. Picard and Dr. Crusher were married to each other and divorced. Picard himself is banished to a do-nothing retirement on his family's vineyard in France.
When they are reunited at this late stage of their lives for this presumed final mission to save humankind, the tensions between them all are palpable.
After they dramatically solve the anomaly problem, uniting ideas and thoughts from all three time periods, they are once again aboard the Enterprise in the present day.
The potential catastrophe behind them, the senior staff, as they had been wont to do over the years in their down time, were playing a game of poker. Picard had never played with them.
As they wager and deal, joke and tease they hear the door to the room slide open. There, standing in the doorway is the captain. Obviously moved by what he had seen in the future he asks, "May I join you?"
"Of course!" they respond in chorus. Troi says, "You've always been welcome." Riker leaps up to grab an extra chair and they make room around the table for one more.
Data, the android, asks Picard if he'd like to deal. Picard says, "thank you," and takes the cards in hand.
"In my younger days I used to be a pretty fair card player," says Picard as he begins to deftly shuffle the deck.
Here he pauses for a moment.
He scans the faces of those at the table; his most senior crew and closest associates. He slowly drinks them in with his eyes one at a time.
And then he says this: "I should have done this a long time ago."
Ah the bittersweet dirge of the reflective mortal.
"Sweet" because of a dawning that came to Picard in time to salvage some moments.
"Bitter" because of all the times that could have been.
Scan the landscape of your lives, leaders.
We cannot physically transition to the future to witness it for ourselves as Picard did. But with foresight, we can get there with our mind's eye.
And then of whatever we might envision ourselves saying, "I should have done this a long time ago," do it.
Regret is such an agony for all the good a few actions might have done.
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