Memento

Prompt: Do you agree with Leonard’s statement that we all need mirrors to remind us who we are? In the movie the mirrors were his notes, the photographs, and tattoos. What has he become by relying upon them? What would you become without your own mirrors? How does a view of self that relies upon mirrors fit with Hume’s theory?

Ultimately I agree with what Leonard is saying by how we all need mirror to remind us of who we are. Mirrors though can come in all shapes and sizes. It can be literal, it can be random, it can be a constant. For example some people and I’ll admit that I tried this once upon a time, waking up to look in the mirror feeling crappy about myself. But I learned to be positive and encourage myself to find the beauty of things while looking in the mirror. Never conceited of course; I would just think about the positives in life. That I have a family who loves me, great relationships with people around me, the material and abstract objects that I’ve been blessed with. In other ways, I also use my family, but especially my sister to remind me of who I am. She keeps me grounded. In the movie unfortunately, the main character literally needed reminders of who he was as a person in order to find the man who killed his wife. I hate to relay it in this way but the only way I could picture Leonard is like a robot, who has to be programmed with information in order to become real, because without he’s lost. He’s become extremely paranoid and when he has those short burst of memory loss, like in the beginning of the movie where he punches the one guy who’s trying to help him, he loses all reality of things. His memory was shot. The only thing that was able to help him were the notes he wrote down and the pictures he had to go with the notes.

I don’t know what I’d do without mirrors to be honest. I feel like mirrors are just apart of life, naturally we can find them anywhere, at least that’s what I think. We would be living a new life everyday I think if we didn’t have mirrors to remind us of who we are. My family reminds me of the foundation that I’ve built over the years obviously up until present day, but without that reminder, do we just go about our days? I don’t know really. But you can have heavy reminders about anything based on just passing by something on a walk in the park. Although Hume’s theory is that memories are only partially the truth, and that half is what we make it to be is essentially what Leonard is. He is going off of written memory, but those are just the basic details that took place, but what about the entire event. Its an impression that we have that must’ve taken place because nothing else would make sense.

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