entry 54. life as a movie.
If my life were a movie, what would happen next? And is it even interesting enough to BE a movie?
I haven’t had those thoughts in years, but tonight I have been entertaining them.
I just watched a movie I didn’t particularly enjoy, but the end had me in tears anyway. And so, like any good escape artist, I started looking at my life as if it were a film. I didn’t really enjoy the film because it got me thinking about things I’d just rather not think about…about attachments to people and things, about choosing to be a hermit or choosing to actively be in relationships with friends, family and lovers. Am I a hero? A victim? Am I the struggling artist whom everyone wants to catch that big break? Or am I just someone else in search of meaning and depth in an increasingly polarized and lonely world? Am I at the breaking point where the right person walks in with an offer I can’t refuse that will turn my life upside down, in all the right ways? Or have I already met that person, taken that offer, and it still didn’t land me where I wanted to go? In other words, are my greatest successes behind me or before me? And where am I standing, anyway?
I’ve always believed that we have a choice in how we view our lives, and in that choice we have the greatest, and perhaps only control. I can’t control what will happen to me tomorrow when I step outside of my threshold, but I can control weather or not I get upset or elated by it all. Looking back, lately I’ve been more indifferent than anything. I don’t remember the last time I laughed with abandon. I don’t remember the last time I got really pissed off, either. I don’t even have a clear cut dream at the moment. I’m so consumed with staying afloat; with keeping food in the fridge and gas in the tank that I don’t even have the spare brain cells to dream properly. And without that dream, it appears that I’ve sort of lost my taste buds for life. It’s more about texture, I can’t taste.
That’s not to say I have no dreams, I still have the big ones intact. But those are far too big for me at the moment. What I am lacking are the basic, small, attainable dreams. The dreams that keep you going when life all becomes too much to digest. The ones that give you comfort in the lonely moments because they are within reach…all you have to do is
reach for them.
