Erase Memory!

I first came across the idea of getting memory erased in the movie 'Paycheck’. There, the concept is introduced in a corporate scenario, where companies avoid the divulgence of confidential information such as, the innovation behind their products by erasing off the memory of employees leaving their projects. The story is about a scientist who saves the world from his own invention, a machine which shows you your future and also how he gets his girl. But then how would he remember his mission once his memory is erased? For this, he leaves himself some clues. The company he was working for, erases his memory at the end of the contract period. He is penny less and clueless about his current scenario and is just left with a handful of random stuff. He deciphers that he has some connection with them. He pursues the mystery behind the clues that he left for himself. Finally, it is shown that with willpower and smart usage of our brain, we can overpower technology. Impressive. About getting memory erased, you work hard and accomplish gr8 things. Forget about taking pride in your achievements, what is the use of it all, when you don’t even remember starting off working on it. Of course, you do get money to live.

‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind’ deals with the same concept of erasing memory from your brain from an emotional perspective. The guy here comes to know that his impulsive girl friend got the memory of him erased from her brain coz he hurt her. He then meets the doctor to do the same, get his brain erased of her memory. But during the procedure he realizes that he wouldn't want to lose the emotions of the time that he spent with her. He tries to resist the erasure. Finally he could only help himself to create an emotion which would drive him to a place where they spent good time together before. By the way, the girl by now realized that she was missing something in the life that she started afresh and reaches the same place. Eventually, they meet each other afresh; neither of them remembers anything about their past but fall in love yet again! Both of them feel the connection. It could be the psychic connection that the girl keeps talking about. Whatever it is, the question is... is it all over and brand new, if one gets the memory erased? How does one feel like without feelings left about a part of one's life? Isn't a chunk of your life missing? Imagine yourself not remembering anything from your past. There's jus no effect of that part of life on the rest.

Finally, the way our mind works, sort of awes me. What is our mind made of? What is it that makes the person that u r? Anyways, so what will I be if I get a memory erasure done is my question. Say I forget all about incidents where I was hurt in the past. All the incidents, where I, who lived without my parents, was left alone to face on my own, say are gone. What if I forget about the pain that I ever suffered? What if my grandfather who was my best friend, who had nursed me as a baby, took good care of my life all through, who values me and makes me feel good about love in life is erased out? What will I be from tomorrow? Will I still be a strong girl who doesn't expect others to stand for me, to hold on to my values? Will I still be an independent girl who doesn't expect others to help me out? Will i still be an enduring person who takes in pain to help out people? Will I still be an empathetic person?

Sometimes you keep failing. Yet you are perennially confident. Where does that confidence come from? Sometimes you are always successful, but not happy. Sometimes, whatever you have or not, you are happy. Where do all these characteristics in different people come from? We might call it 'learning' from the past. But conversely, the path that you traverse ahead in your life might not be the same path that u have taken in your past. In that case, why do you really need to follow the strategy that you have learnt from the past? So you can go ahead without any memory of the past, is it? I don’t know. But for the present, I think, I would be comfortable feeling my feet on the ground, remembering everything that I have gone through in life and learn as much as I can from it. By the way I am scared even to go to an eye specialist to get my eyes checked. So I don’t consider myself strong enough to visit a brain doctor! Considering that it would be a long way ahead for such a thing to come up thoroughly, I think I still have decent time to think about it. Anyway, who knows what I will be and how much I care about my past in the next minute? There’s even my favourite line : “ Everything is for our own good” and sometimes God knows it better than us. So jus take in what happens to you. Quoting Steve Jobs from his Stanford speech : “You can only connect the dots backwards”. So lets jus live happily ever after!