[I roughly spoil the main points of the story in this blog.]
I actually severely misinterpreted the title of this one. I thought it was going to be some alien story, but it was nothing like that. It was, in fact, about a man named Hillary that was performing an operation on himself so that he could have "total recall." No, not the movie! Total recall just means that you remember absolutely every moment of your life since conception. It's not just the visual aspects of the memories but also the touch, smells, and even the emotions felt at the time.
The story is actually told from the perspective of a theatrical producer that was getting play scripts from Hillary that were so good that they were taking the world by storm. Apparently Hillary's attempts to perform total recall on himself was giving him near perfect inspiration to make smash hits every single time.
The problem with Hillary's "mind digging" was that he was soon forced to relive these events every time he merely thought of them... even the tragic moments of his life. For example, he might have been relieving the death of a parent or some other tragedy. Under normal circumstances, we do have the ability to sort of disconnect ourselves from bad things. We tend to get really depressed when we keep obsessing over the tragedies of our lives. What Hillary was doing may have seemed really cool and useful, but it was ultimately detrimental to his mental health.
Just as a further example, imagine if every time you thought of the 9/11 tragedy in New York, you have to go through the entire experience again with all the emotions you had at the time. It's like that. Not good.
Ultimately his play writing suffered from this, and he soon had a complete mental break down. It's a tragedy in and of itself, and it's also a good reason we should not attempt total recall like he did. I still recommend the story though, even though it will leave you feeling a little sad (just not as sad as Hillary!).
This blog was written on May 31, 2024.
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Very insightful. We can't "go on" in life if the memories remain as fresh as the actual experience. They become our every moment.
ReplyDeleteWe have very interesting brains that do try and protect us from insanity.
DeleteMuch of what we experience is unpleasant. It helps that we must work to recall these things. However, we need to acknowledge them so the healing can begin.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but not constantly. We need breaks.
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