Delete-ious

I tried to watch my copy of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s messed up though so I wasn’t able to progress beyond Jim Carrey taking an impulsive train ride to Montauk (it’s pirated kasi bought at a measly price of P60 – so I can’t really complain if it zonked out.)

I love this film. It’s such a wonderful insight into how our hearts and minds work. I won’t attempt a review here as I know you have your own take on the movie. But if you do want to read about the movie and what the critics say about ESOTSM, go here.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about deletion – not so much in the extreme way that Joel and Clementine and all the other patients in the movie did – but something akin to that.

What if somehow, we have evolved a social norm where if you got tired with someone, you just say: I delete you from my life and the person instantly goes away no questions asked? I am not implying I wanna do these to some people in my life but sometimes lang I think we get into situations where it’s just so tempting to do it this way.

It’s escapism I know and somehow it’s sad if we can actually do that. I remember this story about a friend. During a more turbulent time in the country, their father was forced to go underground. By dint of whatever circumstance, he met a woman and they formed their own family. When the father emerged sometime later, he asked his wife for an annulment. My friend’s mom denied his request on the grounds that annulment makes it seem that the marriage never happened; that prior to his leaving, they didn’t have a life together. Annulment, at least in her view is tantamount to invalidating their life together.

Delete. Oh dear, the many times in my life when I would have loved to have this convenience. Delete this person and along with the person goes all the bad things and vibes and hurt feelings. But it does beg the question: who will I be and where will I be without these people in my life. When you delete someone from your life, logic dictates that even the good times should be thrown out – a bad case of throwing the baby with the bath water. Naalala ko tuloy the many times when I deleted software or programs from my trusty computer only to be confronted later on by a message that goes something like: software not available to open this particular document. The software may have been deleted but some files in my computer needed that to run perfectly.

For better or worse, these delete-ious people do define who I am at the present. I just wish I had more wisdom to weed out the not-so-nurturing people in my life before they had a chance to imprint themselves on me. Here’s hoping that I’m better equipped now.