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What I Learned:

Last year was one of the worst years in orthodontics.

Starts were flat, production was down, and the business environment was tumultuous…for the third year in a row.

When times are tough, if you’re like me, you start questioning past decisions.

Or worse—you beat yourself up for things you could have done better.

I came across this story when I needed it most, and it became one of my favorites.

I adapted it for this newsletter, and hope you find inspiration in the message.

An old man notices something is off.

What looks like the adjacent room in the back of an appliance store confuses him—it has items and gadgets from 40 years ago.

As he walks into the room, he immediately notices the room is cooler and the weather outside is different.

The world outside the window is at is was forty years ago.  Shocked, he asks the store owner what’s going on.  The owner tells him the doorway between the two rooms is a “Gateway of Years.”   Same store—but forty years ago.   The owner warns the old man not to get too excited: Yes, it’s time-travel, but the past can’t be changed.  Any efforts are negated–as whatever you do in the past is already accounted for in the present.

“All you can do is forgive, atone, or rediscover.”

But the old man doesn’t believe him.

For his wife died 40 years earlier when their apartment building collapsed while he was away on a business trip.

He believes he can change this.

He walks out the door into the past.

…But the town they used to live in is hundreds of miles away, and the effort to travel or communicate is challenged by every nightmare imaginable:  weather, broken lines, robbery, injury, and travel delays.

Yet the old man persists.

Until he reaches his hometown.

A day late.

He finds the apartment building

…in fresh rubble.

He relives his nightmare again.

But another man walks up to him. 

He introduces himself as a rescue worker.   The man tells the old man he had conversed with a young lady before she passed.  The old man recognizes this lady as his young wife. The rescuer recalls the lady’s last words, "While her life was cut short, the moments she spent with with her husband were the happiest of her life.”

The old man sobs uncontrollably.   

For he had never received this message.      

And he comes to realize the store owners’ wisdom:

Nothing changes the past.

The only thing you can do with the past is forgive, atone, and rediscover.

That is all, but that is enough.

I’ll assume every professional in this industry has a business or personal regret.  

There’s probably something you’d rush to change if given access to a Gateway of Years, regardless of whether I told you it was futile.

But I love this story’s lesson.

Even if you could return, where you are right now would be the same.

The only thing you can ever learn from the past is new lessons, amends, and stronger realizations of why things ended up exactly as they are.   

But you don’t need a Gateway of Years to do that.

Make amends, forgive, and move on.

And rejoice.

For if you’re reading this—

You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be

and your story isn’t over yet.

^{Reference: Story adapted from Ted Chiang: Exhalation: Stories. 2019. Picador Publishing.}

Accept your past without regret so you can face your future without fears.