I'm All Ears And I'm All Scars To Hear You Tell Me: Boy's Like You Try Too Hard

I’ve always found that one of my biggest problems is I think too much. It makes easy things hard.

It’s an over analytical paralyzing disability that leaves me trapped inside my own mind if I’m not careful. My whole life I’ve been a dreamer, a hopeless romantic and dweller. It got to the point where I identified myself in such a way, I was unabashed and proud of my delusions. That was who I was, that I was my identity. Lately though, I’m starting to doubt whether this is a good thing.

Why? I guess because it is, as cliché as it is, it’s unrealistic to think this way. Life is messy. People are not the shade of perfection they paint themselves to be.  People who place the safety of their heart in the fantasies of their mind get hurt. I’m not saying putting yourself out there is a bad idea, far from it. I still think being vulnerable and getting uncomfortable is one of the keys to true happiness. But having fantasies about the way things should be blurs reality to the point where you might miss something great right in front of you.

Comparing your life and personal situation to those of others is a dangerous game. So dangerous there are very few ways to win. However, I can think of a game far more dangerous than that—comparing your life to the fantasy you have carefully crafted brick by brick. The very word Fantasy carries the connotation of make believe. It has a place, but we need to be mindful of that place and remember where those bricks we used came from.

Film is a relatively new revelation of modern technology within the last hundred years and it led the way for dramatization to take hold of the hearts of everyone born after 1920. It’s cliché to say life isn’t a movie. But the truth is its not, we can’t live like it is because we’ll end up ruining it.

A friend of mine loves to call movies. She understands them and knows where they’re headed. Twist ending, character development or merely a simple event and she can call it. There’s a reason for that. Movies as a whole are predictable. Sure, there are some idiots out there who are genuinely surprised when the guy gets the girl or good defeats evil, but if you take a large sample size of movies and tv shows they all fit the same bill.

They’re predictable. We wrote them. They came from our minds. They are the pictures of what we want things to be. There’s only one problem with projecting that on real life. Real life is not predictable and you don’t get to write what happens.

* Cue slightly insightful cheesy conclusion *

 

Can we influence it? Of course. But it’s important for people like me out there to remember that the clouds are a long way up. While the view may be nice for a time gravity has a way of bringing us all back to earth.

Maybe I’ll stay a sucker. Maybe I’m growing up. Either way A seed of reality has been planted, and I for one am excited to see how it grows.