I watched the aforementioned show this morning on spike tv. Can I just say that I really miss Robert stack. Unsolved mysteries holds a special place in my heart. As a kid it’s all I used to watch. I know, strange. My favorites were the episodes about ghosts inhabiting homes and missing persons. I really disliked the alien ones. Come on, aliens are obviously unsolved. Such a cop out. Anyways, I happened upon the new series of unsolved mysteries today and am extremely disappointed. It’s actually a lot of the same stories that they used to air…juuust with a new host. It’s just not the same without Robert stack’s voice inflections. May he rest in peace.
I did see a short on a man who all of a sudden developed amnesia. He was lost in mexico for months - not sure who he was, where he was from, anything. After the episode aired a few people had contacted the show with information about him, he was reunited with his family, he still doesn’t remember them, he works on it everyday, blah blah blah. What really interested me was when he was waxing poetic about his life with amnesia he said: “I was nothing and I was nobody.” That struck a chord with me. Are we only “something” or “someone” If we have a past?
You could look at this guy’s amnesia like, he was given a clean slate. A whole new life. He could be whoever he wanted, in a completely new country (he was originally form Canada,) make new friends, and even find a new family. He could carve out a brand new existence. One free of past worries, memories, debts, lies. Brand spankin’ new. But, instead, he chose to discover his past. To unearth all that he had left behind – physically, mentally, and emotionally. It seems logical. You wake up one day and you’re 35 and you can’t remember a thing? Best to start searchin’ the past, for sure.
But part of me is curious about this. Here is an opportunity to create a new you and you don’t take it? Is it the thought that maybe you’ll be alone if you recreate yourself? If you search for the past you’ll have others to join you in your life? Or you’ll have a sense of identity if you find out about who you once were? Are we only defined by our relations to others? Specifically, those we care about: friends and family? Why are these people important to our identity? To the shaping of ourselves as something and somebody?
I’m not sure of my answer to this. I want to say we are individuals. We are on our own paths while we walk along side others on their paths. But, do our paths ever meet? And what if my path happens through a forest for quite some time. A forest of amnesia, let’s say. Would I want to find my way back to those other paths I knew before? Or forge ahead on my own? I know I’m talking about amnesia in pretty simplistic terms. There are other aspects that complicate things for sure – but lets say they don’t exist. Would you recreate yourself? Or want to find out about your past?
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