Eternal Sunshine
February 5th, 2006 by Mark
So, my friend Amanda recently wrote an entry in her blog on myspace about whether or not she would erase memories of past experiences from her mind if it were possible, as it is in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I started writing a comment on her blog and then decided that the comment was getting long enough that I should just post it here. So, in order to understand what I’m talking about, you should give her post about this matter a read first.
Amanda, I agree with what you’ve said here, except for your sentence which reads, “Denying yourself experience is only a way of limiting yourself and your significance to life and the lives of those around you.” This idea, that the lack of an experience is somehow a limitation, works in the context of Eternal Sunshine because the lack of an experience is really a blank hole. There’s really nothing there. But, in the real world, the lack of an experience is replaced by, the experience of something else.
I don’t subscribe to the opinion that one has to do as many things as possible and experience as many different things as possible to avoid not missing out on anything. Yes, diversity of experience is important, but I’m never going to fly the space shuttle and I don’t have to do heroine or have a one night stand either. It just boils down to if you’re not doing one thing, you’re doing something else. And, who knows which thing is more enlightening or more important to your development as a peson.
So, would I erase portions of my memory? No. But, are there things that I wish hadn’t happened? Yes. There are choices that I made and there are experiences I have experienced that if I had the chance to do over again I would handle differently. I guess that is called regret. At some point the word ‘regret’ became a really bad word. That’s the perception I get from people in our generation at least. I could probably write a whole entry just about this, but I’ll cram it in to this one anyway. My rationale is that regret is natural. It’s not something that you really get to decide about after the fact. The idea that regret is a really bad thing seems to come up in the context of a few life experiences more often than with others. For example, if you don’t look both ways when crossing the street and you get hit by a car, you should regret not looking both ways. This example is obvious. But, if you go out drinking and do something “regrettable” with someone you don’t know / care to know, actually regretting it is seen as something to avoid. Entire songs have been written about this idea. I don’t follow this rationale. If you were put in the same situation, armed with all of the knowledge that you have now, would you do exactly the same thing? No? Well then welcome to regret. It’s not so bad now is it? With that said, I do think that getting all caught up in something from the past that you can’t change is unhealthy. But, that is different from regret in my eyes.
So, what the hell was I talking about? Right – erasing memory. So, like I said, in the real world if an experience is avoided, it’s replaced by another experience. Would I rather take this job or keep the one I have? Would I rather date this person or stay single? Would I rather go out and party all night or stay in and watch some movies? These are all common decisions that people make every day. But, who knows what might come of a job that you currently have if business starts booming; who knows what might happen if you’re single rather than in a relationship; and who knows what might happen if you stay home and watch movies? You just might write a blog entry about it that spurs a discussion.
I have this tendency to discuss things to death. Hopefully I’ve avoided that and have actually gotten a point across.
I figure as long as you learn from things (especially if you regret them) that displaces the idea of regret. For example…i wish i wouldve gotten out of relationship B sooner bc it was unhealthy. But i learned from it, so would i take it back…No. Because i like lessons.
About that line…I guess i just meant that if we erase all the hurt weve endured in our lives, we are erasing insight, empathy, understanding, and wisdom. And who the hell wants that?
I should read your site more often. It might inspire me to post on my site more than once every two months. That aside, I agree with your assessment of regret. I hate how its been given such a bad connotation. It has become the “in-thing” to say, “I have no regrets!” Well ladi-frickin-da. Don’t give me that horseshit. Everyone has something they would do differently… everyone has regrets. Maybe those “wrong” things that you have done have made you who you are today, true. But don’t lie to us all and say that you would do things exactly the same if you had to do it all over again. This situation implies that you still have the memories of what you originally did. Guess what… you’re the same person.