If Your Life Was A Movie...
Would you watch it?
If a movie was made of your life, what kind of movie would it be? Comedy? Drama? Action-romance?
What do you want the genre of your life to be? I enjoy a revenge action movie every now and then, but I wouldn’t want my life to become one (given that the prerequisite is generally the tragic death of everyone you love).
If your life is a romantic comedy, does that meant that meeting and falling in love with your partner is the most important thing that will ever happen to you? Nothing else you do or accomplish, no other goal you have, matters as much as a single relationship in your life?
If your life was a movie and it was a coming-of-age story, does that mean that nothing important happened after childhood or adolescence? You grew up, and then just…became boring?
Where would the time skips be? What would your character learn during montages?
What parts of your life were skippable? Which can be summed up with a shrug and muttered few words, and which have to be explained in exhaustive detail, because every moment mattered?
For the skills you’ve picked up and the work that you’ve done - how would they be shown? Would there be montages set to cheery music as scenes of late-night study sessions and early morning tests go by? Would time speed up in the film as a building was erected, a book was written, a company built?
What's the character arc? How did you change from beginning to end?
If your life had a theme, what would it be? Did you become kinder, smarter, wiser, humbler, more aggressive, less impulsive, or braver? What lessons did you pick up along the way?
How are you different from your younger self, and what dramatic scene features you making a choice or taking an action that your younger self wouldn’t have?
When you come full circle on your journey, and return to the place you started (only it isn’t the same place because you’re not the same person you were when you left), what do your changed eyes tell you? How do you fit - or fail to fit - into the context and the roles and the boxes which used to be so comfortable?
Is it a slow bun, or a fast-paced thrill ride?
Does the tension ratchet up as ominous music grows from background noise to deafening symphony?
Are you spending your life lurching from crisis to crisis, no time to rest and recover and introspect? Or are the crunches few and far between, the most important decisions rare enough that you can afford to give each ample consideration?
Would the viewer feel your anxiety as things don’t go your way, or could they relax, knowing that whatever happens, you’ve got it handled?
What if your life was a TV show instead of a movie? Would it be a procedural? Would it be episodic, or feature a more interwoven plot?
Are there arcs to your story, concrete chapters the time naturally falls into, or is the whole thing one long serial? If the TV show were broken down into seasons, what would they be? What would be the arc of each season, the big bad waiting throughout until the climactic finale?
Or is your life repetitive, comfortable in the way that familiar things are, where each day, week, month, year is an echo of the last? The problems may change, the actors may come and go, but does the structure remain the same?
One person does not, generally, make a cast. What about the rest?
Who are the supporting characters? The love interests? The foils and the nemeses?
If you have a partner, are they a co-lead of the movie or just another supporting character?
Is there a villain in the story? If so, are they another person in the cast, or something in the environment? Or is the biggest obstacle standing in your way the protagonist themselves?
What would the soundtrack be?
Would your life be classically scored by a great composer, with different motifs for each character and an instantly-recognizable theme?
Or would the score contain all your favorite songs, playing in the background as you succeed and fail, fall in and out of love, dance and laugh and eat and work?
Are there particular songs that would play during the montages or at particular dramatic moments, so that the backdrop to your proposal was a gently crooning guitarist?
If you choose popular music, what genre? Is your life set to bubblegum pop or power ballads, heavy metal or acoustic strings?
What song would play over the credits?
Would you watch the movie?
We all think of ourselves as the main character of our story. Sometimes that’s even true: sometimes we are the central plot-moving protagonist in our own lives. But there are plenty of other times where we’re merely going along with the flow, following well-worn paths in well-worn ways. If you spend your whole life doing that, what distinguishes your movie from anyone else’s? Why would you bother to watch another person doing the same thing everyone else has done, over again?
Not everyone is cut out to change the world. In high school they told us all to lead, blatantly flouting the mathematical necessity for there to be more followers than leaders. There’s nothing shameful about following, nothing wrong or bad or mistaken about not taking the path less traveled by.
It’s just that nobody is going to be lining up to see the movie of your life, either.
What would be the scope of your movie? Would it be a sweeping epic or a small character study? Which would you want it to be?
Is a tragic life, writ large upon the world’s stage, better than a small, happy life, just because it makes for a better story? Should a life be judged by how much it entertains?
Most people would prefer a small, happy life to a great, tragic one, even they’d prefer a movie about the latter. There are far more stories of grand failure, of hubris and heartbreak and human stupidity, than of simple quiet contentment.
How much should you want your life to play like a story? How much plot do you really want, when plot means difficulty and challenge and stress and heartache?
(And not just the normal difficulty and challenge and stress and heartache, but the glorified, larger-than-life versions that make it to the big screen?)
Imagine you could see the whole movie play out before you, all the way to the end.
Imagine you’re not satisfied with the choices of the main character; you found yourself yelling at the screen for them to do something, turn around, don’t let that person leave, just go for it.
Now hear your own voice, from the other side of the screen, telling you that same message.
Your movie isn’t over yet. You can still change it. The script is still unfinished, the cast not set in stone.
What kind of movie do you want your life to be?
Choose, and make it so.