"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!"

As the show last night drew gently to an end, I noticed that most of the cinema had fallen into a thoughtful silence. Other than the soft sniffling and the occasional ruffle of a tissue produced to wipe an unexpected tear. the audience was deep in thought..

And I thought how extraordinary it was.

Clearly, the show had struck a chord in everyone, but in different ways... On one level, many of us (even me?) can no doubt relate to either one of the characters Joel or Clementine – the complete opposites who meet and fall in love and then find that their apparent difference makes them collide more often than they expected, an irony considering that that was why they were attracted to each other in the first place… cos the difference had made them both better people.. with more exciting lives.. or whatever..

Then of course there’s the obvious question – if you could live life all over again (clean slate and all that), would you? Go back to a certain point in the past, in your relationship with someone, and live it all over again – this time, hopefully avoiding the painful mistake that you made.. the last straw/s that broke the camel’s back.. A friend had told me a couple of years back (a day after an especially painful breakup with his girlfriend) that he wished he had something like 'Norton GoBack' (something like Microsoft’s System Restore) so he could go back five months and do something to prevent their first nasty argument from happening.. I remember that straight after he said that, we both mused over it silently for a while and finally had to agree, it wasn’t much point unless both of them could remember what had happened.. and moved on from there instead..

The truth (as it was powerfully brought out in the movie) is, given the exact same circumstances and the same two people with the same tendency to make the same decisions and to react in exactly the same way, things are just going to happen ALL OVER AGAIN, when the two people meet again! As Cherie Carter-Scott says in her book 'If Life Is A Game, These Are The Rules', “Rule Four – Lessons are repeated until learned. What manifest as problems and challenges, irritations and frustrations are lessons - they will repeat until you see them as such and learn from them.” So that’s a bit of fruit for thought..

Lastly, I find myself musing over why sometimes, we hold on so desperately to mementos from the past – things that certain people have given to us – not because we like these things, but because of the sentimental value they possess for us… while it is understandable to do so for people who may no longer be with us (on Earth), to reminisce over the times we had with someone who has since moved on into other relationships just seems so.. I don’t know… regressive.. then again, that’s MY opinion..

Oh well, so much for musings.. Go watch the show if you can ‘cos it’s ending soon – Jim Carrey isn’t at all the annoying rubber-faced Jim Carrey you normally see.. He and Kate Winslet are brilliant in this show..