You Can’t Buy Memories
By Emily Ann Brandriff
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was a very shocking and riveting read. With our society’s values of love, promiscuity, family, individualism, and creativity it seems shocking to imagine a world without all those things. Our society empowers individuals, families, creative expression, and love. As said time and time again, we love love. We love the love between mother and daughter, father and son, star-crossed lovers, high school sweethearts, newlyweds, and siblings. We love it so it was extremely hard to comprehend the discomfort and shame clouding fatherhood and motherhood showcased in the book. The empty sexual encounters seemed completely not right. On the surface you could infer that this could never happen in reality. However, when you magnify our society we love consumerism.
We talk about a new product - how awesome it is. Then the next time you pick up your phone there is the advertisement. You’re bombarded with that product until you have to consume - you need it. You get it - cool, now what’s next? We see this hype all the time. How many times have we seen the news broadcasters film the camped out lines in front of apple the night before a release? Or videos of employees trampled on black friday? What about pursued relentlessly for that one night stand and never to be contacted again? We have all felt that, we have all been victims of each other’s & our own shallow desires. When you look at our world through that lens you realize how realistic this nightmare could be. The memories I hold closest to my heart are the ones money couldn’t buy. I’ve felt more myself surrounded by my family fleeing a thunderstorm halfway up Mt. Whitney. I’ve felt more myself feeing the music and air fly through my horses ears at the Reno Rodeo. There isn’t a single thing I wouldn’t give up to hold onto the memory of folding my sister’s clothes into her new dorm room and giving her one last hug and well wish. A life without these moments or the ability to comprehend and hold onto these moments seems empty.
That might have been the feeling I can imagine John felt - hollow. A hollow life, a hollow dream, a hollow existence. When I read that John committed suicide after participating in a Soma excused act of desire. At first I thought he was ashamed of his participation in everything he rebuked, but after more thought. What if when he woke and realized even after submitting to what seems to make everyone else happy had left him feeling just as hollow. His quest to show true happiness became hopeless along with any and all hope of ever having a fulfilling life himself. Instant gratification is not happiness. The things you surround yourself with do not surmount to the acts of love we create in life. These shallow desires are human’s achilles heel and it is our lifetime duty to realize and overcome it.