"I have this condition."

If you could go back in time and forget certain moments, start fresh with no recollection of how or why you got where you are, would you? Leonard Shelby created lies to give his life purpose, but in all honesty, is that really any different than what we all do in our own lives? 

In the movie Momento, Leonard Shelby tells us, "I have this condition". In a way, I think some of us may be envious of that condition. In his own twisted way, Leonard is able to give his life purpose through things like "learning to trust his own handwriting" and basing his life off "facts, not observations." The irony of this of course, is that his whole life, this purpose that he has created for himself and that the audience is so drawn into, is fictional and made up. The reason, I believe, that some of us may be envious of this condition is because we all do this everyday in our lives. Whether it is consciously or unconsciously, we all tell ourselves little lies to give our lives purpose and meaning, or to just make it through the day. Sometimes in life, it is difficult to find meaning in the mundane or the ordinary so in order to find this hidden purpose one might have to create it within his or her own life.

In the case of Leonard Shelby, he knew that his life would fall apart if he knew the truth, like Teddy said to him at the very end, which would technically be the beginning, "You don't want the truth, you make up your own truth." But maybe that is just it, maybe we all want to find purpose or forget or change something in our lives so badly that the real truth becomes irrelevant because we would rather believe our own truth. For some of us, the real world is just too hard to handle sometimes, but that does not mean that it doesn't still exist and hold meaning in our lives. Like Leonard said, "Just because there are things I don't remember doesn't make my actions meaningless. The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?" So, even though Leonard Shelby might be able to live his life based on lies that he has created to give himself a purpose, it only works because he cannot remember where the lies began. Unlike Leonard, we can all try to convince ourselves of certain things in our lives, but as much as we might like to think so sometimes, we will never be able to completely run away from the truth or reality.