Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I remember seeing this quote on my friend's status.
For the longest time I thought it is just another "thought of the day" kind of thing, until one day, he told me that this is his favorite film of all times. Well, being the lazy person that I am, I didn't search for the film. Instead, the title of this film popped up on my screen, on my flight to LA. So, as curious as I always was, I clicked on it.

There seems to be the re-occuring theme of "time" in our lives. We constantly fight time or live by time. It seems like we can no longer function without time. Yet, we fail to acknowledge that time can sometimes mess with us so badly! It can cause so much unnecessary frustration and worry.

In the film, I witnessed love. I witnessed forgetfulness. Forgetfulness of memories and forgetfulness of time. I witnessed timeless love-- eternal love. Really, what is more important than enjoying every single moment of now? Why worry about losing someone in the future if it takes away the happiness of now? We are limited beings, as Spinoza points out in Ethics. Yet, our reasoning allows us to realize everything in aspect of eternity. This is what differs human beings from the rest of natural beings.

What is eternity really?
Isn't everything eternal as we can never change whatever happened, and the memories stay with us for as long as we're alive?

Why worry about the future, the unpredictable future, or the undetermined afterlife? We have now, and only now, that we can fully appreciate the moment.

(I guess this brings me back to "The Power of Now")

The Power of Now

I've never read a book so closely and carefully, from what I remember. I guess I can't say that "The Power of Now" is life-changing, since I do not know the exact and universal definition of "life-changing", yet this book did change my perspective of life. Like most other readers, I was extremely skeptical about the content of this book. I thought it would be another book that sounds convincing and useful, but is practically theoretical and pretty much inapplicable to my current state of life. Yet, the book is so straight-forward and conveys a message that is identical to the title-- The Power of Now.

It is so difficult to ignore the past and the future, yet when we really think about it, the past and the future has no impact on our exact moment of "now". The most current state of now. Even if we're upset from some incident that happened an hour ago, so what? It is not now, so we should no longer feel the negativity. Even if we are worrying about some possible outcome, that has to do with the future, something that we cannot control. So why worry? Why stress? Why care about time if you think about life as a finite set of  pictures? Why cry about people leaving, if they were once so close to you? That is enough! Once you are together, that moment is eternal. No one can take away what happened already, as no one can control the future.

When I'm feeling down, I just remind myself of "The Power of Now".