Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash
Am I a phoenix being reborn from the ashes, or am I shooting star, slowly fizzling away?
Whenever I think about life, this is essentially where I come back to repeatedly.
Everyone loves a hero’s story. Writers throughout history have realised that a story is only interesting if there is failure. Nobody wants to listen to a story about someone who was always perfect throughout their life. No, instead, we are engrossed by stories where the protagonist fails. But when they fail, they do not give up. Through perseverance and overcome the grand challenge before them.
Unfortunately, life is not like the movies. If the current moment of my life is to be the moment preceding my rise, it unfortunately feels far less poetic, and certainly far more boring. Whereas Rocky seems to be able to grow in the space of a 5-minute montage, the experience in real life seems to take a whole lot longer.
And in the movies (at least in the Hollywood ones), we enter knowing that the hero will eventually win. Righteousness prevails even in the worst of situations. Thanos may have snapped half the population away, but the Avengers managed to turn back time, win the war and have the Happily Ever After.
Alas, real life has no such guarantees. Perhaps we cling to a hero’s story because it means avoiding the truth that not everybody succeeds in the end.
But maybe I’m not in a Hollywood film. Perhaps instead I am closer to the life depicted in French cinema, living out in depressing black and white. I recall watching a film from my University French Film studies course. Three hours of slow, tedious progression. The misery of social issues depicted were transmitted through the misery you felt sitting through the film.
Such films are filled with long, vacuous staring out the window. The ending inevitably miserable, with the protagonist dying from a mix of melancholy and a tragic romance.
The contrast couldn’t be bigger to Hollywood. Life is suffering, and we must be reminded of that. Hope is the fleeting moment between the harsh oppression of modern existence.
Perhaps I’m an anomaly. An Amélie that breaths fresh air. A quirky protagonist, that whilst misunderstood, can ultimately be charming in their own way. Despite sticking out like a sore thumb, they do eventually find their own happy final ending.
Perhaps movies are too short to really do justice to life journeys. My escapism tends more to be from video games. It’s a format that allows for longer format storytelling. I play as Henry, a blacksmith’s son in 15th century Bohemia. When war comes to my doorstep, I am feeble and have no choice but to run. I may be able to get my hands on a sword, but if I try and fight trained soldiers, I am completely outclassed and quickly slain.
I enter the service of a lord and through practice, slowly build up my skills. I slowly improve my competencies. What was once an impossible fight becomes manageable. Lowly fetch quests are replaced by noble tasks. Over time, money and prestige follows. By the time of the game’s sequel Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, I am a squire, embroiling myself in a tale of kings fighting for the throne.
I sometimes wish that life was more like a video game. Progression is rewarding, and far fairer. I would have a better idea of what to do, and more fundamentally, working towards something would have a clear benefit.
In the video game, I level my swordsmanship by practice. The progression is clear, and I am rewarded with further perks and skills. The effort I put in is demonstrated to me as each battle gets progressively easier.
But in real life, I feel the path is inversed. When I try and improve my health, my body falls further into illness. The gym made me stronger, but also sicker. Rest made me heal, but also gain weight. Common wisdom doesn’t seem to apply.
In my career, I used to believe that it was broadly meritocratic. Yet the more skillful I became, the more I find myself at odds with the whole system.
Greater consciousness allows for greater skill. But what does one do when greater consciousness means seeing the faults of the system? The grand difficulty of consciousness is that once it is turned on, it can never really be turned off.
I cannot unsee what I have seen. For every inch of positives that I see in my previous career, I see the damage it does. I cannot ignore the ego driven leadership, the unethical practices and harmful approaches. How can I dedicate myself as noble as working on a ‘good cause’ when, on reflection, I think it may actually be doing more harm than good?
How can I genuinely believe in an organisation which is vocal on issues it cares about, but blatantly ignores the atrocities in Palestine? That to me is not the path of righteousness.
Real life is unfortunately far more complex and messy than the beautifully woven tales.