I remember watching a korean movie on tv some months back. The title was "The Gift" and it tells of this man who is a comedian and struggling to make ends meet. As his career was on the downside, his relationship with his wife was affected and it initially looked like there was no more love left in their marriage, only respect. In the movie, the wife kept looking at a photo taken long ago. There were a few people circled in that photo, a few kids who were presumably her childhood friends. There was this little girl who was a close friend of hers and a young boy whom she kept looking at in the picture and traced her finger around.

The wife suffered from a terminal illness towards the end of the story. Despite her illness, she repeatedly tried to help her husband get a chance at performing on a popular tv channel. The husband was touched by her efforts. After noticing that she always looked at a picture secretly, he got some people to help track down those who were circled in the picture. She managed to see her friend again, the little girl who had then grown up to be someone ordinary but who still was special to her. As for the other boy, the answer came a little too late.

The husband was the little boy. He couldn't even recognise his own picture and he was surprised to find out that he was the person she had been thinking of all this while.

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I don't know if I remember the whole story properly as I was rather bored by it. Don't know why but it just came to my mind just now. Thought about it and have some thoughts to note down here.

People do not give up on broken relationships easily. I guess it is that there is always this dissonance present. Fond memories in your head are like snapshots taken. There may become blur, a loss of details but the thought of them brings back the same emotions. In reality, the people have changed, the relationships have soured, but many people choose not to see these. They try to reconcile their memories with the present. I'm one of these people.

There are these people I still care about but no longer contact. I think about them sometimes.

I think I now understand that the feelings I had felt before can only be brought back by the memories we share and they are best left where they are. I know that no matter how hard I try to repair the relationships, the feelings can never be the same again.

Am I moving on? I hope so.