Eternal sunshine

Dr Fahim Chand | Monday March 30, 2026 10:00

Soon the world expands: rattles must be shaken, toes must be discovered, and anything within reach must be tasted, regardless of whether it is food, furniture, or the stuffed toy.

Childhood then introduces more sophisticated pursuits, collecting rocks, trading stickers, and asking “why?” with the persistence of a tax auditor.

By the time school arrives, passions grow serious. We pledge eternal loyalty to dinosaurs, football teams, or whichever cartoon character currently possesses the most impressive superpowers. Friendships are sworn with solemn oaths that last at least until Tuesday.

And then, without warning, adolescence appears. Suddenly the opposite sex becomes fascinating, terrifying, and mysteriously capable of rearranging one’s personality with a single glance.

Homework loses urgency, mirrors gain importance, and love, previously unknown to science, arrives like a dramatic plot twist nobody remembers signing up for.

And oh, what a journey it is. For most of us, this inevitable ambush arrived somewhere in the high-school chapters of our life story.

One harmless glance, and suddenly the internal wiring short-circuits.

The heart pounds faster than Usain Bolt in the 100-metre final, or like spotting the last parking space at Airport Junction on a Saturday morning. Our normally calm, well-organised cognitive machinery collapses into chaos, incapable of forming a sensible sentence, let alone a strategy.

And what triggered this internal storm? Perhaps the theatrical flick of hair covering half a face, or a smile so incendiary it seemed to tug directly on the heartstrings, demanding further investigation for purely scientific reasons, of course. Before long, the entire friend group knows of your chosen interest, just as you know of theirs.

The Brotherhood Code requires full cooperation: hallway positioning, carefully timed loitering, and the hope, never guaranteed, of a nod, a hello, or eye contact lasting longer than a blink.

Then comes the school dance. The music swells, courage appears from nowhere, and she says yes. Suddenly she’s at the movies with you, stealing your chips, French fries if we must be formal, and the air itself feels charged with evidence of young love.

Most of these romances end in melodrama, moping, and emergency counselling from friends, which raises the uncomfortable question: if given the chance, would you erase it all to avoid the heartbreak?

That, of course, was the delicious dilemma at the heart of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the wonderfully strange film by Michel Gondry starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.

I loved it, mostly because it asks the one question none of us can answer with confidence: would you really delete the pain, knowing you’d also lose the magic?

Though after careful consideration, I suspect that unless someone has lived a life resembling a particularly gloomy soap opera, most of us would keep the memories, rollercoaster loops and all.

We like to sound philosophical about it, declaring that life is nothing more than a collection of moments stored in the attic of the mind, and irritatingly, that turns out to be true.

I have yet to see anyone enjoying their worldly possessions after the final curtain call.

It is our experiences, especially the inconvenient ones, that shape us as we stumble along life’s obstacle course. Heartbreak teaches resilience, embarrassment teaches humility, and disappointment teaches us that things rarely go according to the script.

And for the cherry on top, somewhere in that mental highlight reel you sit with your high school companion, watching Luke Skywalker saving the galaxy and walking into the sunset.

Proof that no matter how chaotic life becomes, part of us still expects the music to play at exactly the right moment.