Eternal Sunshine

Spotless Minds:

What would happen if you could forget all about someone? Would you continue to fall in love with them; is doing so inevitable because of who you are and who they are? Or does that only happen if the two of you were “meant” to be together? Would that not happen if they truly “bad for you” and you became a wiser person for having known them and learned about yourself by knowing them? …But then wouldn’t you erase all that wisdom you gained by knowing them when you erased all memory of that person?

And how impossible would it be to erase all traces of a person in your life? Joel is instructed to gather up all paraphernalia, any article related to or which may remind him of Clementine that materially exists in his life. Imagine what an impossible of a task that would be. Perhaps that is only the case for me and Joel, since we would have garbage bags stuffed with all sorts of items—from homemade potato heads to “borrowed” hoodies—and other patients in the waiting room only had single objects: a trophy, a nameplate. I’m not sure I could ever successfully erase the reminders of having had an important person in my life successfully. What if drinking water reminds you of that person? Watching a new movie? One cannot stop living.