Last night i was watching an old episode of the X Files, where one of the main characters ends up having his memory erased and dumped in a small town in Mexico. His son had been killed years before, and the only flashes of memory that came back to him were that he had a son. When his memories came back to him by the end of the episode, it was like reliving it again and he was devastated.
But then he confronted the man who had erased his memories. The man asked him, "Do you really think your'e better now that you remember your life? Why would you want to have back all that pain?" And the character answered "Because it's MINE."
This has set my wheels spinning more than I thought it would. It seems sort of obvious that it would be great to pusha button and erase horrible memories, especially those people who have suffered horrible abuse etc. But doesn't what happen to us define who we are and the path we take in life?
I remember seeing another documentary about a man who compeltely lost his memory one day, and his wife ended up leaving him even though they'd been together for years, because he literally wasn't the man she'd married. His persoanlity was different, because it had been shaped by all the things that had happened to him, including all the years they spent together.
So I'm torn. What do you think? Would erasing memories fix our depression? And would we lose something else in the process?
