Emotional Amnesia

I enjoy movies where the character has amnesia and has to piece together the past so they can be free to live fully. Jason Bourne is one of my all time favorite characters in movies or books. After a violent attack and being shot in the back, he awoke with no memory of his prior life. Yet, he had this magnificent physical and procedural recall when faced with danger - he was a highly trained combat machine with vigilant awareness of his surroundings. As a secret agent of the government, he had been part of many missions. Yet, the viewer knows that the only mission worthwhile for someone who cannot remember who they are is to seek out answers from the past. Somehow we all know that there is no path to living with joy and integrity if we don’t know where we came from. 

Memory can hurt. Our hearts are always feeling as our brains retrieve stored memories. So intertwined are feelings and memories that we can’t do one without the other. Perhaps this is why we rarely stop to take inventory of what has happened to us and how we got to where we are. We can begin to practice a low grade emotional amnesia - “What is the use of stopping to feel this again, let’s keep moving forward”. How many men have watched Jason Bourne courageously fight to recover the story of his life while they live in refusal to do the same? 

It takes great courage to stay connected to our hearts as we live in a tragic world. Yet, the restoration of personal freedom is well worth the pain.

Written by Colton Shannon, Ph.D.