"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"

I just finished re-watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you’re unfamiliar the basic premise is that in the near future there is a technology that can selectively erase memories and it is being offered as a service to remove memories of significant others after they have broken up so as to remove the pain of losing them. The first time I saw it I must have been around fourteen and I remember my initiation naïve, pre-high school reaction, which was “Why would any one do that...aren’t broken relationships like any other mistake...you’re supposed to learn from them?” Six years of experience and heartache later (damn I feel old), my thoughts are the similar. Although relationships aren't mistakes in the way you usually think of them but the pain of remembrance ensures that things are different the next time.

On the whole, there’s really nothing/nobody I’d rather forget because the point of experience, of life, is that you can learn from your mistakes. There’s always some bad mixed in with the good...“every rose has its thorn”...and all that sentimental crap... but really...without the pain of past experience we’d never grow.

What do you, the universal you, think? All things considered if you could would you completely remove your memory of anybody and live as though you’d never have met them before? Does it really matter who ended things? Would you change your mind if the roles were reversed. Just a few thought on this Wednesday afternoon. Feel free to respond to them below.

P.S. In case you were wondering, the quote in and the title of the film is from the poem Elosia to Abelard written by Alexander Pope.