Eternal Sunshine

So today I watched a great movie with a good friend of mine. The movie was Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. I had never heard of the movie until about a month ago, but let me assure you it's worth your time. It features a star-studded cast including Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Kirtsen Dunst, and Elijah Wood. The story is about two lovers Joel and Clementine (Carrey and Winslet) who undergo a procedure to have the other wiped from the memory after their relationship goes south. I won't spoil anything for you. All I'll say is that most of the movie is spent showing their interactions and the difficulty that comes along with erasing memories. By the time the end of the movie came I felt like I was missing a part of me.

Needless to say that the movie made me do a lot of thinking. Thinking about love, the past, and memories. To some degree we've all felt heartache at one point or another in our life. I feel I can make that assumption because at one point we've all lost something or someone we cared about. Some will experience more heartache than other's can even imagine, and even though that isn't fair...that's life.

At 19 years old I can look back and remember days where I thought my world was crashing down on me. But even if I was given the opportunity,  I don't think I would erase any one person from my memory.

Eternal Sunshine showed me that if we go back through our memories we'll see the good, the bad, and the ugly. But it also showed me that if we search deep enough we'll find our way to the core and see the very thing we loved most. At the core we find what kept us going, what got our heart racing, and what made us feel something special.

All relationships have the potential to grow sour. Just like all love that is felt can be unfelt. But memories are supposed to be everlasting. And just because something ends or changes or dies off doesn't mean it should be forgotten or erased. If we erased every bad memory we experienced we would never make it anywhere in life.

Without trial and error how would we know when something good stumbles into our life? I don't think we would.

I like looking back to the first time I met someone. Oftentimes I meet someone once or twice before they remember meeting me. Which I like. I like having a memory of them before they knew of me.

It's like my own little secret, or a glimpse of them in a dream. 

It's dreamlike because you remember them being there, but they can't place you for the life of them. 

I guess it's fair to say that you meet people all the time & that oftentimes you meet the same people again for the first time. 

And I like that. 

I've met and re-met some amazing people this semester. People I would never in a million years erase from my mind. 

I'll leave you with a quote from the movie and a part of a poem also used in the movie...

"Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders." - Friedrich Nietzsche

“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” -Alexander Pope

NP: Bloodstream- Stateless