Our society is very consumed with entertainment.
When we’re not watching shows on Netflix, we’re talking about them. It is always amazing to witness the amount of passion people have when discussing their favorite show, sports team or movie.
We get caught up in these story lines and characters that we love or hate with such vigor. On the more extreme end, we see fandoms.
These subcultures devote their lives to something that is completely made up and for the most part, based in some other reality.
I think what excites us is the idea of being someone other than ourselves.
Through watching movies or reading a book, we can, if only for a moment, experience what it is like to live the life of someone that’s daring or adventurous. Someone whose life is filled with excitement and newness and tragic beauty.
Fictional characters live the life we wish we could, but think we can’t.
It is too often that we look at our own lives and grow bored and unfulfilled at what we spent all our years making; we grow tired of the greys and whites.
Instead of striving to change our lives, we settle for experiencing moments of artificial color that we obtain through our entertainment outlets.
Hoping to find vivid blues and deep reds, we instead find watercolors and pretend it is enough.
Eventually we have moments of actualization where we realize this, but fear and failure cripple us from making a change.
We have to allow ourselves the possibility of failure in order to step out and accomplish what we want to.
Instead of being consumed with the lives of those that are made up, focus on the one that is actually being lived.
And live it fearlessly.
The author Clay Clark said it best: “My friend, temporary setbacks and failures are prerequisites to success. They aren’t signs that ‘maybe it’s just not supposed to be.’”
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