The Spotless Mind

          “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.” Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind holds an intriguing plotline, where a company can go into each and every memory and erase the existence of someone you once knew. It made me wonder how it would be, in an almost Fahrenheit 451 sort of future, where our photographs or footnotes would literally be the holders of memory (and to tie in with the story, if they were put to flame, that memory would cease to exist entirely).

Our minds could be so clear to waste on other frivolous things while piles of pictures would clutter our closets. The “skeleton in the closet” could almost be a literal one—the closet would house the skeletons of our past selves. In some sense, I imagine, our souls would be the anchoring point to our memory-pictures, so that we would still be able to look back and reference past experiences and whatnot (as those moments would help define us as people).

If that were true—that our souls are the anchoring point for memory—a great deal of misfortune could happen. A soul could become damaged from tragic experiences, or the photographs and notes housing the memories could become destroyed.

In a more realistic sense, memories are fragile. We never remember an event the same way. All our experiences are relative to ourselves; our world is entirely perspective. There are numerous illnesses that destroy memory and cognitive functioning. For those victims, and for everyone, really, memories may as well be confined to our photos and our footnotes. Without those reminders, many memories would oft be lost, as burning paper spreading the ashes of our lives, forgotten. Resigned.