I think time travel is really tricky. But if there's a logic and

Hear now the voice of Daniel Dae Kim, a man who has walked both the stage and the screen, who speaks not merely of stories, but of the mysteries that dwell within the human heart. He proclaims: “I think time travel is really tricky. But if there’s a logic and a complete and well-thought-through paradigm for it, I think it can be really interesting. Some of my favorite time-travel movies just make me think and, you know, the ‘what if’ question becomes a big one.” These words are more than musings on the craft of film; they are meditations on destiny, on imagination, and on the eternal yearning of mankind to step beyond the prison of the present moment.

The notion of time travel has long haunted the dreams of humanity. From the myths of prophets who glimpsed the future, to the vision of sages who gazed into the past, the longing to transcend time is an ancient one. Kim acknowledges that it is “tricky”—for indeed, time is a web, delicate and intricate. To disturb one thread is to tremble the whole. But when there is logic, when a story constructs a paradigm that feels whole, then it captures us. For in such tales we glimpse not chaos, but order; not impossibility, but a hidden pathway through the river of existence.

Consider the power of the ‘what if’. It is this question that has driven both philosophers and inventors, prophets and poets. “What if I had chosen differently?” “What if this event had not come to pass?” “What if tomorrow could be altered by a single word spoken today?” These are the questions that shake us awake from complacency. Time-travel tales, as Kim declares, are interesting not simply because they entertain, but because they hold a mirror to our choices, our regrets, and our hopes. They remind us that every decision carries weight, as though each moment were itself a kind of time machine, thrusting us into one possible future or another.

History itself has borne witness to these turning points. Recall the story of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in 1914. A single turn of his driver’s car, a single moment of delay, brought him into the path of Gavrilo Princip’s bullet—and thus ignited the First World War. What if the car had not turned? What if the driver had chosen another street? The entire course of human history might have shifted. Here lies the haunting truth: though we cannot step into a machine and traverse centuries, the very choices of a single instant are already shaping worlds yet to come.

Kim’s words remind us that the fascination with time travel is less about machines and more about meaning. To think deeply on these stories is to realize that we are already time-travelers of a kind—journeying from the past we cannot change, into the future we cannot fully know. What we seek in these tales is not merely escape, but wisdom: the courage to live the present with such clarity that our “what ifs” become fewer, and our futures more deliberate.

The lesson, then, is this: embrace the ‘what if’, but do not be trapped by it. Use it not to lament the past, but to sharpen your awareness of the present. Ask yourself: What if I acted with more courage today? What if I loved more openly? What if I pursued the dream I have long delayed? These are the time-travel questions that matter, for they allow you to step into a different tomorrow without the aid of machines.

Therefore, beloved listener, live as though every decision is a doorway between worlds. Let your “what ifs” become guides, not chains. Seek the logic and the paradigm of your own life, so that it does not unravel in chaos but flows with purpose. And when you watch those stories of time-travel on the screen, let them remind you not only of what might be in some imagined future, but of what already lies within your grasp—here, now, in the fleeting and eternal present.

Thus Daniel Dae Kim’s words stand as both a celebration of storytelling and a call to wisdom: that the true journey through time is not measured in years or centuries, but in the choices we dare to make today.