These past few days have been strangely coincidental. I was talking to Lutfi about the concept of Time, and how we perceive it to exist merely because of our ability to retain memories. Without memories, how can we have any recollection that time has passed? The movie Memento explores the mind of a man who has short-term memory loss, and cannot remember things for more than a few moments. The last thing he can remember is his wife dying. He talks to himself in the film, saying:
“I don’t even know how long she’s been gone. It’s like I’ve woken up in bed and she’s not here… because she’s gone to the bathroom or something. But somehow, I know she’s never gonna come back to bed. If I could just… reach over and touch… her side of the bed, I would know that it was cold, but I can’t. I know I can’t have her back… but I don’t want to wake up in the morning, thinking she’s still here. I lie here not knowing… how long I’ve been alone. So how… how can I heal? How am I supposed to heal if I can’t… feel time?”
The weekend after I had the above conversation, I unwittingly borrowed Kinsella’s Remember Me? from Aisya for some light reading. The story turns out to be about a woman who wakes up with the last 3 years of her life erased from her memory. She starts exploring her new self who’s completely different than what she remembered herself to be. Naturally, this protagonist relies on the people around her to help her remember by relaying what they know of her. Surprisingly, she doesn’t recognise this person whom everyone says she apparently is.
The day after I finished the book, I came across Samantha Who?, a sitcom that shares almost the same plotline as Remember Me?, except the lead character Samantha has complete amnesia and has no idea who she is, what she likes and what she’s afraid of. She ends up having to relearn herself from Square One.
All these coincidences about time and memory lead me to one question:
If you had an accident, woke up one day and found out you had amnesia, have you ever wondered whether you’d be happy to find out the person you are, the person you’ve become?
And who do you have in your life right now who’d be able to help you on your path to self-discovery (or maybe ‘self-recollection’ would be a more fitting term)? Who would you trust to help you fill in the blanks and colour the empty spaces as accurately as possible? Who knows your oddities, your habits, your traits, your very essence, best?
And at the end of it all, what if you don’t like what you find?
“If you could start over, rewind your life, do it all differently, what would you change, even if that change was hard and scary and might leave you more alone?” - Samantha Who?
Ok, make that 3 questions.
Enough said here.
