Memory worth fighting for….

For some of you who might notice from the title and the picture, it is easy to guess, right? After all, the picture is very popular in the net. Yes, this is a thought I came up with after I watched Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, Tom Cruise’s latest sci-fi flick.

No, I’m not going to write a review about Oblivion here. I like that movie. I like the idea of that movie, and it is entertaining. That would be all I will say about the movie.

What resonates quite strong in me is the idea of choosing to fight for a memory over reality. For most of us, this is an idea difficult to live with. Or, so it seems.

However, I would rather argue that this we have done quite often. Without realizing it, many of us might have done it quite  immensely. This happen when we try to fight based on what we believe it is the right thing. There is different words for this, as it is used in different contexts. The most popular ones are love, faith, tradition, customs, values and idealism.

In the movie Oblivion, the idea that the forgotten life of the protagonist was the real life, while the current life is the perfect but not genuine life. The reality, as it may seem to be good at first, is actually mischievous manipulation of life that eventually lead to destruction. Then, he regain his memory of what he then believes as what his live should be. Based on his love of that memory, and how he value it deeply in his heart, he embark for the fight to keep that memory alive and become reality. At the end, he still meet the end of his life. The same final result he will get if he don’t choose his manipulated life path.

But he died for what he believe is the life he love, the life who put him as who he truly is. This is of course different from dying for something he does not believe in.

In reality, many fights for the same thing. Things that are no longer exist in their current reality, but to which they still believe in and longing for. It is for these things that no longer exist in reality but alive in their memory, they gain their energy to fight, to survive or to sacrifice.

Love, faith, tradition, customs, values and idealism are the way we use to name them. But because they are memories that we still believe in, they energize us to fight.

My small but quintessential note on this is one: Not all memories we believe worth fighting for is actually a good one. Some of us did fight the bad ones, for those memories who are not for the good of many. That’s why we have terrorist. That’s how we have anti-progress people in the process of change. That’s why we have resisting and isolated group.

When they are in our opposition, we are not happy about it. It’s simply because the memory they fight for, is the opposite of the memory we fight for.

But remember, the memory is theirs, just like our memory is ours. None is necessarily better than the other, for all of them are personal.