Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Someone once said, Happiness is nothing but bad memory. There have been popular movies, notable one being the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which Jim Carrey tries to go through a surgery/procedure that attempts to pick out all his memories with his ex-girlfriend and remove them from his brain/mind to relieve him of the pain of separation. This was viewed as a weird science fiction not many years back, and now scientists seem to be on a path to do just that (although they are miles away from doing it)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7892272.stm


If you read the article, there are obvious ethical concerns raised by other scientists. Are we compromising on our identities by losing our memories? How much impact will it have on what we've learnt through experiences? Is it worth all of that than to relive a trauma till time eventually wanes the memory down?


On one hand, I would be tempted to attempt this procedure if I get to a stage in my life where my past and memories haunt me beyond my capacity to live normally. But does it boil down to escapism and running away from reality... almost like being on drugs? But yet, some of the benefits would be overwhelmingly helpful to some people and humanity in general.


The cases that pop into my head are those of the lives of terrorists and mentally disturbed people around. There are tonnes around. These days I'm beginning to lose hope on psychotherapy, but if there were some way to make such troubled people forget their disturbing pasts which is causing them to develop into the personalities they currently are, isn't that miraculously wonderful? Wouldn't it be like a magical wand acting on all our heads? As I write that sentence, it spells out the incredible danger such a procedure can have... talk about controlling the universe and ruling it, if all you had to do was make people unlearn everything and convince them that you are God! I'm getting carried away... But would you consider taking such a procedure at some hypothetical instance of your life? Would you advocate and encourage more of this research?

I Believe in Angels...

As Abba sang, "If you see the wonder of a fairy tale.... makes you take the future even if you fail. I believe in angels, something good in everything I see..."

The child in me still believes in fairy tales. Cinderella and Rapunzel were not happy till the end of the tale, were they? They had cruel witches and horrible curses till Prince Charming rode along to rescue them. But the modern Cinderella that I like to see myself as, no longer believes in the Prince Charming part. No knight rescues damsels in distress these days.... damsels need to learn to rescue themselves. But just as Cinderella had her fairy God Mother and friendly little mice, Snow White had her friendly little dwarfs, and the Little Mermaid had Sebastian, the lobster, the ones to truly help these little damsels out of their distress, I like to believe in little angels. If you think about it, the knights/princes have only kissed and danced with these princesses in the name of breaking curses!

I watched an old episode of 'Ally McBeal' where a stock broker was fired as he was deemed mentally unstable for believing in seeing a unicorn. A person seeing something that others couldn't and believing in something that others normally wouldn't are prone to being judged as schizophrenic, and with good reason many times. But as the lawyers argued, religious beliefs are based on supernatural occurrences. If one claims to see Santa Claus or Krishna, he is revered, but when one claims to see unicorns or centaurs they are jeered. A nice example of hypocrisy.

Anyway the point I was trying to make is that, sometimes relying on the child inside of us lightens any situation we need to face. As a child, our hopes were alive and ever optimistic. Everything I saw as a child had a sparkle of imagination and magic to it. The gross frogs in the garden were seen as princes under curses, the nagging teachers were imagined as witches who would vanish when water was poured over them, my new shoes were thought of as Dorothy's shoes waiting to be clicked to transport to a different land, the loud noisy train turned into a magical rattling box.... adding a little pixie dust to everything around made the world so surreal and different. It makes us see the little angel that got out of Pandora's box - Hope.

Why lose that child inside me, when it helps me see the world through tinted glasses? Borrowing Abba's lines,

"I have a dream, a fantasy.... to help me through reality. And my destination, makes it worth the while. Pushing through the darkness, still another mile. "