Memento

In the corporate world, there is a thing called initiatives. Initiatives are taken to bring a much-needed change in the company. Recently I read an article that talked about what makes an initiative successful. The onus fell mainly on the shoulders of the CEO and the senior management. Companies initiate a change to fix a chronic problem or to mitigate an imminent risk.

Initiatives happen at a personal level, too. People often decide to change something about them. They find out that something is wrong and they decide to take it by the horns. Then the struggle begins. Of all the struggles, the oldest one is the struggle between good and evil. This is the struggle between our morals and our desires. It is between our knowledge and our impulses. It is between our social pressures and our chosen paths. It is between our minds and our hearts. It is between our souls and our bodies.

Its not that we don't know the problem, or we don't know how to fix it. It is the perseverence that poses the challenge. It is hard to leave the comfort zone and jump into the unknown. It is hard to resist the urge and be desciplined. It is hard to let go what we think we deserve, while everybody else is enjoying.

When I saw the movie 'Memento', I felt a connection between it and the human nature. Even though you hardly come across a character like the one in that movie, but it can be used as an allegory. Memento is the story of a man suffering from amnesia. He is trying to find out who he is, but keeps forgetting. So he devises a method of remembering by leaving notes for himself. Each time he loses his memory, he reads his notes. But how to remember to read the notes? You'd have to watch the movie to find out.

I just realized the connection between the struggle of the protagonist in the movie, and the struggles that we go through when we want to change. We do want to improve, and we do want to follow our heart. But, as the strong winds of our desires blow, an amnesia plagues us. We forget what we aimed for, and what we decided was best for us. It is like a storm hitting a boat in deep waters, when everybody loses orientation. It is when our philosophies fail and we disgrace ourselves. It is when we forget about the sublime, and stoop down to the sub-standard. It is precisely at that time, when we need a memento.