Memory

Okay, so I just finished watching Inception for the second time and althought some mistakes were clearly made in the film it's still going on my all-time favourites list for a few reasons. The first two that come to mind is the blatant plagiarism of dream sharing from my 2008 NaNoWriMo entitled Oneironauts and the other being the heart-breakingly awesome Canuck, Ellen Page. Anyways, before watching the movie a second time I hit the debate boards a little and someone brought up the interesting point that the children don't age three years - which would be supporting the idea that the majority of the movie, if not all of it, was a dream. I didn't like this hypothesis but it would be a rather dumb blunder on the film-maker's part. I thought to myself that it's a blemish that I'll have to live with. But as I started watching the second time through I thought to myself that they do age. But I wasn't sure. I was so sure before that that online blogger was right. Which leads me to the tangent which is the topic of this post.

Memory is a funny thing and I think there would be a lot less arguing, bitching, complaining, and more understanding if people kept memory in the back of their mind. Sorry, let me clarify. Practically everyone in the world is familiar with having memories, it's impossible to not be. It's basically the history that we've written for ourselves up to the point of the present. Most of these people realize that people forget things and that some people forget things than most, and people have gotten used to this. But what far fewer people realize and need to is that some memories are falsified by our brains by mistake, sometimes subconsciously, and on the rare occasion intentionally by the truly deluded. This is usually the cause for debate as two parties both clearly remember a situation happening in different ways, or people saying different things. When it comes down to one word being against another, you might as well call it a stalemate for all intents and purposes. The only way to truly settle it is to have a hard, tangible evidence. Recollection isn't good enough.

Memory fades and warps and distorts our histories. We have to accept that and keep that very important fact in mind when dealing with other people. And ourselves.