Now think about this. What if, one day in the future, they created a process like the one used in Eternal Sunshine where they zap away your painful memories into nothingness? All the bad times, they just go away. Zap.

I was laying on my couch and thinking about this last night, when it occurred to me that if they were to create such a machine at some point in my future, what are the chances that I'd use it? And if I did use it, why the hell was I still laying on my couch in my crappy condo and not at some happy place in the future?

Don't get me wrong, my life's not all that bad right now. But I can think of a lot of things that would make it better. It’s just that most of those things seem like a lot of work. So what if I put the time and energy into them now, then just zapped the time spent away now in the future.

Ready...

Zap.

Damn. I'm still here. It appears not to have worked. This could mean any one of several possibilities.

Possibility number one.

I realize my own hubris in claiming to make my life better, and that I'd actually have to commit to making it better in order for the whole plan to work. Meaning, I never actually get off the couch and do anything to improve my life, assuming these bad times will be zapped away, and thus never get to a point where I need to burn "the bad times" from my memory because there is no future happy place.

It's a whole Catch-22 type of thing. You have to work like there isn't going to be a machine to take all of it away in order for there to be an opportunity to use the machine to take all of it away.

That's all rather depressing. Let's look at possibility number two.

Possibility number two.

They never actually create a machine that wipes out your memories.

That's defeatist talk. Let's move on.

Possibility number three.

They do create a machine that wipes all of your memories out, but in order for there to be memories to wipe out you must first create them. And that's where I'm at now. Stuck in the creating part. They'll all go away, but there has to be something there first in order for it to go away. Otherwise, you're spending a whole lot of money on nothing.

Make sense? All right. We'll move along.

Possibility number four.

This is the one I like the best. Happy days are right around the corner. There are no bad memories remaining to wipe out, because tomorrow will be a better day. Things will start to move in an upward swing and never really stop. The momentum will be behind me, pushing me up and onward.

I'll win the lottery. I'll pay off my loan. I'll move to New York. I'll become a famous writer. I'll shed all of these ridiculous extra pounds I seem to enjoy carrying around. I'll have my chance to beat up Good Charlotte. I won't be paranoid about as much stuff. I'll be able to open my mail. I'll regale people at cocktail parties with stories of my misspent youth. I'll own a suit, and wear it once in a while.

I'll do a lot of things.

But wait. Let's try the machine one more time, just in case. Here we go...

Zap.

Damn. At least this couch is comfortable.