“If I could turn back time …

If I could find a way.”

Those were the opening lines to Cher’s hit single, “If I Could Turn Back Time,” from her 1989 album, “Heart of Stone.”

Time is an interesting concept that most of us will at one point or another wrestle with.

For the teenager, time seems to almost be standing still as it crawls along from day to day.

To the senior, just the opposite is true as they bemoan the reality that time seems to be slipping away too fast.

For some, it seems like they need a day to be 28 hours in length to get all the things done that they need to, while, for others, it seems like a day would never end.

Recently a California-based CEO has been in the news for the extreme lengths he is going to “turn back time.”

According to newspaper accounts, Bryan Johnson is a 45-year-old executive who desires to have the body and health of an 18-year-old. And he is spending millions toward that end each year to achieve his goal. This year, for example, he will spend $2 million on his regimen of diet, science, and fitness that is wrapped into a plan he calls Project Blueprint.

While not everyone has that kind of money lying around, they might wish they did, as Johnson says at his website about Project Blueprint that, in seven months of 2021, he was able to reduce his biological age by 5.1 years.

Personally, starting off my day with a green juice shake of peptides, creatine, and cocoa flavanols, followed by a chaser of lithium for the brain, isn’t my idea of breakfast. I’m more of an eggs and bacon type of guy.

But to each their own.

I do find Johnson’s pursuit interesting. And, admittedly, the concept of turning back time is intriguing.

I was thinking of recent headlines from the newspaper and what would happen if we could turn back time.

Would the Alpena Public Schools Board of Education and Ella White Elementary School Principal Thomas Berriman handle the whole situation with Berriman and his reaction to a disruptive outburst of a special needs student differently?

Does the board wish the public relations nightmare that has been created never occurred?

Does Berriman wish he would have handled the whole outburst differently?

Or what about in Alcona County, with that county’s Commission on Aging board members and all their resignations? Would rolling back time make a difference there?

Or what about the suspension of Commission on Aging Executive Director Lenny Avery by those members who remained?

And what about that $12.5 million grant the agency secured from the state for a new community center and senior and public housing?

At this point, one has to wonder whether the grant was a benefit or a curse to the community.

Solomon, a scribe much wiser than I, once wrote, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” Solomon then goes on to contrast things with time — for instance, a time to be born and a time to die.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, where that writing can be found, his purpose was to share with readers the hope that could be found in an otherwise dark and frustrating world.

Solomon wrote that it was not time that holds the promise of better things, but, rather, a relationship with the creator.

While fun to dream, ultimately, none of us are going to be able to impact the march of time.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it ‘the present.'”

Sounds good to me.

Bill Speer recently retired as the publisher and editor of The News. He can be reached at bspeer@thealpenanews.com.