To forget or not to forget...
After watching the Eternal Sunshine... the idea seemed so interesting to me, I felt it's worth a post.
How great would it be if we could forget all about our bad experiences? Or maybe even our good ones? Don't you ever regret that first date, when you are filled with excitement and happiness and all ready to start... After a relationship ends, how much pain do you feel, remembering just that one memory?
But again, isn't it true that our personality is a result of our experiences? How would we become wiser if we could actually select our memories? I believe selecting only the "successful" moments would cause us to stop where we are and never move forward...
Watching the movie, I tried to do a fast review of memories from my "important" moments and surprisingly there were tons of them that I had to try really hard to recall. Things I used to think I would never ever forget...And I did! As simple as that!
To me it seems like a big part of the memories stay alive, because we're in contact with their sources... We're living in the same place, seeing the same people and doing almost the same things... But when we change this context, when we disconnect from these sources, we start losing everything gradually... Everything connected to the previous context seems different, the truth (or what used to be conceived as truth) starts to fall out of shape and memories distort and disappear.
Certainly there should be people that are capable of keeping those memories alive, hanging on to that connection, but looks like I'm not one of them. It's not like I completely forget about the past, but everything seems so far away that it looks almost unreal.
Maybe this is a natural reaction to homesickness! Maybe my mind just automatically decides to make all the memories from home fade... This is another approach to selective recalling!
There is a fear however..., how long will I be able to still be ME and ignore these faded moments? Does it even matter if I become a completely different person without them?
I don't know the answer yet but here's how I feel right now: I don't want to forget any of my memories, no matter how bitter, sad or humiliating they are... I WANT and NEED the ability to bring them back to life whenever I feel like it.
Am I totally losing it?
4 comments:
I hope I am not a part of your sad memories. it seems we moved on.
To anonymous: hmmm which one are you? ;) (Please don't answer this qustion!)
To Ali: Thanks fo the advice, I'm using "Hello" right now to post photos but I can just have a caption for them and won't be able to have them in the body of a post. (it'll help if you leave the initial of your last name so I get an idea of which Ali I'm talking to!)
I also forgot a lot of things. But I think I am still myself. Even if you forget a certain event, you have still learnt from it. (e.g.: You have learnt how to deal with people, etc.)
Remembering the actual memory just reminds us where we learnt what we now know!
BTW, this post encouraged me to see the movie.
Hey, it has been a while since your last blog. Have you "forgotten" us?
A.
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