This feels like a movie… Perhaps I shouldn’t want it to.

[tr1age]

To be in the relationship where you can compare it to a movie, I know I have felt it, experienced it. But to reflect on the basics of a movie, you would assume perhaps this is not the “perfect” relationship at all. Perhaps if your relationship reminds you of a movie it is because you remember it like a movie, only savoring the exact edits. You pass the in between time with cuts. A slideshow of a period of time, pictures a day, with the proper filters on them to give them the film feel. Somehow even though the normal everyday life may be normal and not out of the ordinary, with the right color correction and depth of field you miss the world around anything that may seem perfect. Instead of the feeling of bliss when your relationship turns into a movie, moment after moment, it should be a warning that you are only watching the highlights of a complete picture. I mean that is what a movie is comprised of, the perfect moments, good and bad, dramatized for the passing of time, or the emotion needed for portrayal of character.

A movie is easy to critique or judge, but ever decision every day, takes an open mind. One that can look past the personal opinions buried inside yourself. Yet at the same time it becomes a balance of your own opinion mixed with feelings depending on the sleep you had, what you ate, and that of the people around you. Life itself can often fall into a script like approach, revision after revision. The apprehension to improv alone stands in your way.

So perhaps it is a mastery only befitting of a surrounding in which there are no movies or editing techniques to compare to. A world based on the truth around you, not the truth you use to karmic-ly get through the day. A place where your own perfection cannot exist because the only perfect is the days you spend living. Even this, as I write is influenced by the perceptions put forth around me, prideful or filled with humility.

So tonight I look forward thinking back upon the old relationships and moments in time I had where I thought things felt like a movie and realize, I probably don’t want a movie. If I only have fragments of time with years skipped in between due to the time constraints of an audience, I myself am not giving life itself enough care. My mind will then be unable to mature and reflect as well as see my steps I take ever breath of the day.

I cannot skip chapters in my life, because there is no rewind, but there is definitely a fade to black.

 

[Keleynal]

I cannot skip chapters in my life, because there is no rewind, but there is definitely a fade to black.

Wow, spoiler alert.

I think I've experienced something similar, where I get the feeling that somehow what I'm experiencing isn't real, or is somehow not me and I'm just watching it unfold. I think it might be a defensive mechanism. Like, if I'm just an observer, then what's happening here can't actually hurt me. I can walk out of the theater and go home.

I think a lot of people struggle to take a starring role in their own lives. It's easy to go with the flow and just be swept away by life rather than take control. It's how we wake up and it's suddenly a decade later and we ask "WTF have I been doing all this time?"

The opposite of this would be intentional living. Where your actions are thought out and are all means to an end. Doing that can be exhausting, but with the exception of the few that stumble upon a happy accident, intentional living could be the only thing that can break you out. Personally, I'm still holding out for serendipity.

 

[Diremongoose]

I used to think that about my life. Personally I think a lot of it is about human comfort zones. My life felt very much on 'autopilot' before I departed the UK for Australia on a scholarship. I was going through the motions of school, crappy work, university, more university. My life in the UK felt very much 'pre-ordained' by my situation and how I logically react to the opportunities I was given. That all changed when I moved to Australia though. There was only me with no crutches of close family or friendship. Everything I did was mine. Every unexpected success and failure was reclaimed as mine alone. In the evenings I'd sit on the beach for hours contemplating this stuff.

I have periods of intentional living, as Keleynal mentions, it's exhausting, and I can't keep it up for long periods of time. Intentional living is a brief moment of clarity in life, before yo shit catches up with you. It's good to have a moment to pause in your life and take account of where you are, where you want to be, and consider how you can achieve that. Ultimately, I think everyone is beholden to their own natures. People can change, sure, but it's either serendipitous or it's a metric fuckton of work. Unfortunately the ability to change yourself needs to be already in your nature too.

If you look back on your life and overall, you've got more positive than negative experiences, I think you've done a pretty good job. If that's not the case, start having some fun dammit!

 

[Delduwath]

I hear you tr1age. You definitely have a different perspective on it since you have an eye for composition, but I have been realizing more and more lately just how powerful the human ability to see and remember what it wants is (*cough* politics *cough*).

A simile that has rung must true to me is the comparison to taking a five minute drive down a road focusing on what you're about to do vs. taking a slow walk down the same road without anything to distract you. It's amazing how much more detail you take in that you missed the first time through. So many small, but wonderful things in their own way that didn't even register as you drove by only thinking about the world that ends at arms reach.

It seems to me that as technology and society grows to give people more and more freedom to do and experience things that wouldn't be possible a couple hundred years ago, people are getting more and more wrapped up in the goal - the what's next - and failing to realize it's the journey that is your life; you do not live the destination that is over by the time it starts. I think it's a crying shame to take all of the luxuries living in a first world country provides for granted. There is so much to be thankful for and so much one should be happy about even if they don't have that new car that would be so nice if only for the year or so it's still new to them. I think it's possibly to remember the small things that are important to you and focus on those to the point you can find bliss. It's not the complicated things in life that sustain a man; it is the simple things that he requires - realize that or not.

If you're interested in a philosopher's thoughts on what it takes a man to be happy and modern's thoughts perversions of that. I'd recommend reading "Walden Pond." I feel my dad getting me to read that as a young man has helped me live a fulfilling life more than any other single experience has contributed.

P.S. On another side of that coin. I recently listened to a NPR podcast (link) talking about a study involving base-jumping that talked about how the adrenalin released causes increased memory formation that leads to the interpretation of the perception that time slowed down during such an event. Reminding me that significant events will lead to making more of a lasting impression on you.