What if you could take a pill that affected your memory in a targeted way?
This pill would allow you to choose what you remember and what you forget. You could choose to:
- Only remember the good stuff
- Only remember the bad stuff
- Select certain good and bad memories, a cocktail.
Would you?
Nobility would convince us that we’d pass on the offer and keep things the way they are.
But would you really?
There are things you wish never happened to you. There are also defining moments which have you convinced are the reasons you exist at all, where you were the right person at the right time. These aren’t always pretty, either.
What an insane reality that would be if we could curate our existential legacy in our own minds. I think this is the part of the film where you realize the utopian society morphs into a dystopian nightmare of which there is no escape. I think I’d enjoy that movie. I don’t think I’d enjoy that reality.
I like the bad stuff. Not all of it. But most of it. It helps when you realize that you get to choose what’s “bad” and what “just is.” This doesn’t take away the sting of personal loss at its most intimate. It does recuperate circumstances that we felt would be our end.
Meredith was asking me the other day how my day was. I was sitting in a line of cars waiting for traffic to release. My mouth fired the answered as it occurred to me, “I’m having a great day. I only have great days now.”
She liked that answer. So did I.
So I’ll keep my memories. All of them. Because they are me. They are who I used to be. They are part of who I am becoming. I see it as a “You can’t get there if you don’t pass through here” sort of thing.
What would you do with your memories?
After you figure that out, do you have time to have anything other than a great day? I’ve decided that I no longer have that kind of time.
So, here’s to great days and great memories. All of them.
