Through ironically colourful colourblind eyes....

If you somehow had the ability to see into the future, to be able to see the results of the decisions you make on a day-to-day basis, would you still make those decisions even if you didnt know how it was going to turn out in the long run?

That is essentially what this movie, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is about. I caught the last 45 min - 1 hour of the movie some time ago, wanted to watch the entire movie before I made a blog about it but I havent been able to catch it. Basically the lead character (played by Jim Carrey) learns that his ex-girlfriend went through a procedure to erase memories of him and their relationship. So he decides to do the same. Basically throughout most of the movie we are seeing whats going on in Jim's mind. The procedure erases the memories from the most recent backward. So we are seeing the memories of his relationship when things were bad, how low he was feeling, etc etc. Then we begin to see memories of good times, happy times. He tries to hold on to one particularly happy memory, not wanting that one to go, but inevitably it gets erased. This trend continues with more good memories he finds. Realizing he does not in fact want to forget his ex-girlfriend, we see him "running away" with her from the disappearing memories, trying to hide her, so she doesnt get erased. But inevitably, it happens.

Another character, a college student, tries to start an affair with a married college professor (who developed the technology), only to realize she already started the affair, and went throught the procedure to forget it ever happened. She then breaks into the Professor's office, and takes the interviews of all his clients that did the procedure and delivers them to all the clients. These interviews are done before the procedure, basically the clients outline why they want the procedure done.

Back to Jim Carrey's character...somehow, after the procedure he and his ex girlfriend start dating again. They then encounter the tapes of their interview….they hear their reasons for doing the procedure, they hear all the bad things that were going on in their previous relationship, how they were both better people before they met each other, how they hated who they were in the latter part of the relationship, how its doomed to fail……and they decide to continue anyway.

Basically what I got from this movie is that “its not the destination, it’s the journey”. Its like life…someday we all gonna die, no matter who we are the destination is the same…the only thing that separates us is the journey. Sometimes we put too much emphasis on where we are going to end up and not enough emphasis on the actual journey, not realizing that the lessons learnt on the journey is more than likely more valuable than the destination itself. We all have painful memories, events that we would love to forget ever happened because its so painful, but like the college student who had the affair with the professor, if you don’t know your past mistakes you are doomed to repeat them.

Lesson: never forget your past. Learn from past mistakes, but at the same time never forget the reasons you were embarking on the journey in the first place. When looking back at the journey, you can choose to remember the good times, or you can choose to remember the bad times. But choose you must, forgetting altogether is not advisable.

Choose wisely.



Have a good trip.