Today I was watching the anime Fairy Tail. While I was watching, a thought hit me. In the show, the main characters’ friends get frozen for several years and then thawed out years later — picking up exactly where they left off, none the wiser, while everyone around them has changed. I started thinking: what if that happened to me? Imagine they froze me right now, then woke me up in 2050. The technology, the people, the city, my friends, my family — everything would be different. Would I be able to adapt? Would the people I love still be around? Would my dreams have any meaning in a world that has already moved on?
On the one hand it’s exciting — you’d basically time-travel one direction into the future. You’d see flying cars (if they actually happen), advanced AI, fully automated cities, maybe even space colonies. On the other hand, you’d lose everything you know now. Your parents would be very old or gone. Your friends would have built whole lives without you. You’d essentially wake up alone in a world that no longer needs you.
And then there’s the philosophical side. Would the “you” that wakes up still be the same person? Memory-wise yes, but identity is also about the people and places that shape you day to day. Cut off from all of that for decades, are you still you?
I think the most interesting part would be watching how my own thinking evolves the moment I wake up. The first day I would probably feel like a confused kid. Then slowly I’d start observing, learning, adapting. By the end of the first year I’d probably feel almost local again — but with a strange awareness that I came from another time.
Honestly, if someone offered me this experiment with the guarantee that I could come back, I’d jump at it. Without that guarantee? I’d think very hard. Because right now my dreams, the people I love and the path I’m walking are all here in this time. Trading all of that for curiosity is a much bigger price than it sounds.
Anyway, this was just a thought that came to me while watching anime. Since I opened with Fairy Tail, let me close with it too.
