Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

It's been a while since I wrote my last post, and wanted to squeeze a last one in, especially it being the shortest month of the year (which does have its upside as it means I'll be getting paid sooner...) It’s been an odd few days. Consumed with sleep, I've been battling with my internal clock but not matter how early I go to bed, my body refuses to be awake at 7:30 am. And can you blame it???

So having been wrapped up in the world of movies lately (I blame the Oscars) I can't help but wonder about happy endings. Apart from the masochistic, narcissistic few out there (you know who you are), we pile all our efforts into achieving just that, thinking that we want a happy ending, but do we really?

In a movie, and let's look at the most basic structure of a romantic comedy, we are led to believe that everything past the closing credits and the sappy crooning is rainbows and sunshine and babies. There is a suggestion that nothing of real significance happens past this point of bliss. This often involves a wedding dress and/or a bun in the oven, with someone who was a stranger approximately 92 minutes earlier (and anything longer than that automatically prompts most thinking intelligent beings subjected to the story into a deep and well-deserved slumber).

Many of us have started to view our lives as our own little (or big) movie, probably thanks to the ubiquitous 'biographies' out there. We experience our highs and lows to a soundtrack and carefully consider who we believe our supporting actors to be. We dramatize insignificant events, and tell each other what happened to us today, each from our own heroic perspective. We mentally edit the teaser, the trailer and the montages over and over, wondering if we've captured the mood and the moment. We take make-up and wardrobe seriously, and exert insurmountable efforts to remain in character. But most of all, we worry about the ending. We think about labels, choosing between Cinderella story and war-time epic, or perhaps an open-ended mystery? We wonder which would make the most exciting feature, not wanting to end up as a short. Most importantly, we shy away from the scariest genre of them all: Documentary. What nobody ever wants to see is the real truth.

But when I think about endings; happy, tragic or ambiguous, I do not worry. I know that the ending of one story is the beginning, or perhaps middle, of another. I like to believe in the prospect of a sequel for my story and my life. Or several, for that matter. A happy ending simply won't cut it.