Memory Serum
I’m reading a particular young adult novel set in a dystopian future where various serums exist, one of which can “reset” a person’s memory. Virtually everything you are, gone. There have been times - tough times - where I dreamed of something like that. Something like in the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, where Kate Winslet’s character Clementine hires a company to erase her memories of the relationship with Joel (Jim Carrey), who, devastated at finding this out, also asks for the procedure. How many times have we felt cursed by memories and feelings that haunt us and don’t let us go?
Reading this particular passage, where a character who has been mostly a bad person, sees his chance to start over, lead a better life, ingests this memory serum, something in me clicked. A few days ago my phone stopped working. I have had it for about two and a half years, and as I was trying to console myself that if it cannot be fixed at least I lost nothing important, I remember all the text messages and the Whatsapp conversations over these two and a half years registered on that phone. Falling in love, getting closer to that love, losing that love, still seeing the ghosts of that love. Births and deaths. Making new friends. Learning new things and moving away from others. Huge life choices and changes. So much can happen in that relatively little period of time. Strange to think how it's all condensed on that phone, all this important time which gets spent and is never returned. A part of me really hopes that at least the memory of it can be preserved, via having the phone fixed.
My point here? Not sure I have one. Or maybe I just wonder: is it worth giving up the good to forget the bad? Maybe start over again? Would you do it?
"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd"
(From the poem "Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander Pope)
Reading this particular passage, where a character who has been mostly a bad person, sees his chance to start over, lead a better life, ingests this memory serum, something in me clicked. A few days ago my phone stopped working. I have had it for about two and a half years, and as I was trying to console myself that if it cannot be fixed at least I lost nothing important, I remember all the text messages and the Whatsapp conversations over these two and a half years registered on that phone. Falling in love, getting closer to that love, losing that love, still seeing the ghosts of that love. Births and deaths. Making new friends. Learning new things and moving away from others. Huge life choices and changes. So much can happen in that relatively little period of time. Strange to think how it's all condensed on that phone, all this important time which gets spent and is never returned. A part of me really hopes that at least the memory of it can be preserved, via having the phone fixed.
My point here? Not sure I have one. Or maybe I just wonder: is it worth giving up the good to forget the bad? Maybe start over again? Would you do it?
"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd"
(From the poem "Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander Pope)