Hello, friends! Welcome back, and thank you again for joining me today! Sorry it’s been so long between posts – I hit a combination of writer’s block and pretty intense apathy. But I’m back now, and I’ll really TRY to do better about getting back to regular postings. Since this is my first post in almost a month, I’m probably going to be a little rusty, and this one may be a bit rambly again, but please, as you’ve done so often, bear with me. There will be a point in there somewhere, I promise.
Over the last few months, I can recall no less than half a dozen occasions where I have remarked to my roommate something about me “seeing life as a movie.” It’s a very strange phenomena, but there are times – just normal, mundane, every-day experiences mostly – where I will have a mild out-of-body experience and “see” something happen around me as though it were a short scene of a TV show or a movie or something. It’s hard to describe, because it’s not just like…imagination or anything, and it’s not just like “oh that would be a funny scene in a movie.” It’s more of a feeling of disassociation with yourself or something where it’s like…”this isn’t happening to me, it’s just someone playing me in a movie” or something. It would be more normal to feel during an intensely high or low moment in life, but the fact is that, with me, I most often feel that sensation during wholly unremarkable times.
This got me thinking – metaphorically, all of our lives are movies, and we’re the protagonists. We have recurring characters, changing themes and set pieces, characters that die or get written out of our movie after a time, adversity for us to overcome, triumphs that others cheer for us for, etc. We even get to play guest roles in other people’s stories (though for us, they’re the guest character in our story). We have the ability to interact with anyone we wish, and they can deliver us plenty of information – some that helps further our plot, but mostly just filler – but we always do so through the lens of our own perspective. When someone “leaves our scene,” we don’t get to see what goes on with them until they’re “back on set” with us again. And the same goes for us through their perspective – they don’t know what happens with us until we’re back together again. There’s a big space of missing story for everyone in our lives that we’re not privy to.
One of the best examples of this that I can think of right now actually came to me this past weekend. I was over across the state spending time with a friend of mine and his family for his birthday (social distancing, of course). We were hanging out eating pizza, and chatting – at the time it was about my friend’s youngest brother becoming a teacher and starting his career this fall – and somehow schooling came up. My friend’s brother decided to get one over on his dad by saying something along the lines of “you don’t know about college, I’m the one with a degree!” or something, and his dad, a slightly incredulous look on his face, replied with “…I have a degree, you dink!” While this could be attributed to a momentary lapse of memory on my friend’s brother’s part, it was immediately clear to me that this wasn’t the case, as my friend and both of his brothers were shocked and had some version of the reply of “really!?” As it turned out, my friend’s dad has a college degree in computer programming years and years ago, and neither my friend nor either of his brothers were aware of this. It really hammered home to me that, if someone’s own kids can not know something as big about them as whether or not they went to and graduated from college, there is an almost infinite amount of things they might not know about him. No matter how close you are with someone, how often you see them, or how much you do know about them, there is a whole litany of stuff that you don’t know about them – because they’re just an extra in your story.
Why do I bring this up? What’s my point? I promised there is a point! I’m getting there, don’t worry.
In this day and age, we are very quick to go searching for things that divide us from others. What do they think that I don’t? Do they root for my least favorite team? Do they like pineapple on pizza? Are they a dog person or a cat person? The list goes on and on and on. And unfortunately, oftentimes, when we do find something out about another person that is contrary to our beliefs or ideals or whatever, we become wholly incapable of communicating with that person in a civil manner – it doesn’t matter if it’s something big, like politics or religion, or something more trivial altogether. It always seems to turn in to “well, you think something opposite of what I think, and that makes you stupid!” This is again because we believe that our way is the right way, and everyone else’s is wrong – after all, how can an extra’s thoughts and opinions and beliefs be better or more correct than the protagonists!? That’s just simply preposterous.
My challenge to you (and to myself – I’m VERY far from perfect in this regard) is to be less reactive when speaking to someone who disagrees with you. Try to understand their perspective and their upbringing and their circumstances and experiences and how it’s formed the way that they think. This is absolutely not to say that I’m challenging you to change your way of thinking about everything, or to simply “give in” to your opponent’s views and beliefs, just to take a step back and try to at least understand them – even if you don’t agree – and try to remain civil. This understanding will help cultivate more empathy, and we could sure use some more of that in the world today. Be the hero of your own movie, even though you’re only an extra in everyone else’s.
Thank you all for joining me again on a weird, meandering tangent. It was probably all complete gobbledygook but I hope there were at least pieces that resonated through and helped make the point I was going for. If nothing else, it was fun for me, and a good step back to (hopefully) more consistent content! I likely won’t have a post this Thursday (hey, I’ve gotta ease back in to it!) but the look for a new post the following Thursday.
Thank you again for your time and support, it really means a lot. Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe 🙂
Musings Of A Struggling Creator 