Influences

It is commonly said that we should live in the present and leave the past in the past. However, Memento illuminated the extent to which we base our present experiences and choices on the past. The present and the past are actually very interconnected. By constructing Leonard to be constantly questioning events and people in his life due to his short term memory inabilities, Memento illustrated how often we define ourselves with our pasts. After the “mediated artifact” class, I began to notice the different factors that shape our lives. I noticed advertisements, TV shows and familial influences, but I failed to appreciate the huge effect our past has on us. The past affects who we associate with, where we live and how we make decisions, among other things. As much as we like to think we are making decisions for ourselves, our past actually dictates our future actions.

So is it really us making the choices or have the events in the past influenced us to make certain decisions? I think we are probably led to certain decisions because of our past experiences. Memento demonstrates how completely lost we would be in our identity, if we did not have the past to base it upon. Leonard’s choices would have been meaningless if he had not written notes for himself from before.

As Leonard demonstrates to us, we need people and events to shape our personality and influence our decisions, because without the rest of the world to interact with, we would not have a personality of our own. This class focuses a great deal on the negative influences in our lives, but I think it is important to recognize that our personality is mostly shaped by external influences: our family, our society and our past. It is impossible to go through life without being influenced by everything we experience. It would be a sad and lonely life to not be affected by anything, similar to Leonard.