Friday, December 18, 2009

Who is narrating my Life?

When I am stuck in a low place I like to watch one particular movie over and over again. I like to do this because there is no real commitment. I can fall asleep and wake up just in time for my favorite parts or I can sleep through the whole thing.

I was trying to figure out what it was about this movie that gives me comfort when nothing else can. It came to me that the movie “Stranger Than Fiction” combines all the things I love in life love, food, writing and dry ironic humor. He is an IRS agent hopelessly lost in a mundane life. He starts hearing a voice narrating the monotony of his life an then she states that something he has done will lead to his ultimate death. Until then his life was enough.

It is the perfect story the idea of dying throws him in a panic and he starts to change. He meets the unlikely love of his life, a baker he is auditing and decides to do something about it. He has nothing to lose so he starts changing. Breaking out of the sameness of his existence and deciding what he really wants to do each day.

I can relate to this story because I feel I have been asleep for a lot of my life. I never thought I chose that for myself but it has slipped up on me more than once. First with I make small concessions and then before I know it I don’t recognize the person I have become. This is my own doing, no one ask me I volunteer. I know this now and with this awareness I realize I have to look for what gives me joy in my life. Sometimes I forget that I am choosing to accept less and that I have to consciously pursue joy.

The character in the movie gets a reprieve in the end and the narrator doesn’t kill him. Every time I realize that I am the narrator in my own life I get a reprieve I can make a choice to do something different to not accept things as are but as they can be.

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