The year 2017 has brought me the most challenging seasons in my life. Hitting the rock bottom, I could not imagine how I survived each day. When people see me smiling and laughing out loud, most of them have no idea how I struggled to pick up each piece of myself. Like a movie projected on silver screen, I saw how my character fought the fiercest battle of his life. Almost pulverized by the fangs and claws of depression due to collective personal reasons, I still managed to shake off the dust and went doing everything that God has called me to do. I continued working, teaching, studying, and socializing while engaging into that imagined consciousness that the world turned its back against me.

But no, I’m not here to dwell on self-pity. I couldn’t afford to blame anyone either. Despite all odds, there is still something so special as I end the year. In its most significant sense, 2017 is also a celebration of one decade that I had been through as a young adult. Two thousand and seven (the time when I graduated from college and started my career in media) and the succeeding years would have events and experiences that now serve as catalysts of my gradual growth as an individual and people who extended their generous hands to raise me up.

Then I realized that it is very timely to ask myself this question before the year ends: “If everything that has happened in my life will happen again in exactly the same way, would I embrace this life or would I reject it?”

I set aside a moment to reflect upon each year that has passed. I intentionally put myself in the shoes of a movie spectator to watch how life itself unfolds before my eyes. In the past days, or months, (or when all alone at nights), I bravely dived into the diagesis of my own narratives without cutting off the perceived excesses or blurring the once I thought unnecessary elements. I’ve seen everything again in a long-take-deep-focus aesthetic or how André Bazin would prefer to see it in frame. Due to its lack of montage I sometimes dwell on certain scenes that significantly brought my feet to the place where I stand now. It could be episodes that fed euphoria into my heart or melancholic memories that deeply pierced my soul.

The mere thought of reliving one’s life is very Nietzschean in nature, seemingly sounds like an “eternal recurrence” for me though. It admittedly somehow terrifies me. But after pondering over this for a time, I think my answer is yes. Why? For how myself evolves into what I am now, and how my perceptions about life progressively changes over time, are the results of the binary opposites that occurred to me through the years: good and bad, strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures. Each one element plays a crucial role to move the plot (or the story of my own movie) forward.

However, this leads me to see my life in Eisensteinian montage, too. Anchored on formalism, it is an assertion that when a series of connected images in cinema are strung together it produces a “dialectical synthesis of idea, emotion, perception”. Simply put, it is a type of editing that presents the meaning of one shot in relation to the shot, or cut, that precedes and follows it. It also makes sense when applied in real life, isn’t it? Sergei Eisenstein unknowingly helps me appreciate how a series of connected events and experiences that I had in the past constitute a meaning which I would not fully grasp its purpose if they did not happen in that order.

Twenty seventeen alone for me is one whole movie in itself. It’s been one hell of a roller coaster ride of drama. The first half of the year brought smiles to my face, like I would not wish to end. I tasted a piece of heaven which I thought was endless. Everything was smooth until conflicts stirred up the status quo when the second half of the year began. That admittedly scared me to death. I literally almost died by drowning in the recent misfortunes. It was a fairytale gone bad, cursed by witchcraft.

However, the unforeseen circumstances caused a radical shift how I view the world today. In fact, it just reminded me what Jesus Christ told his disciples that “in this world, you will have trouble.” I might have cried a river, or my heart could’ve been crushed, but look how “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

It is now 2018. Traditionally for most of us, every New Year is romanticized as a blank sheet of paper where we can figuratively write our story all over again. But I’d rather prefer to see life like a movie. If life were a movie, I would not choose to reshoot the whole thing. I would instead be excited to see the sequel. It is in sequel where most of the time the characters are more learned, wiser, stronger, and more eager to reach the summits. The driving force is getting more intense to fuel one’s desire to get through personal odyssey.

And like in other movie series, there are supporting characters who will never be seen again in the next chapters. They already did their part in the prequel. Their roles in our lives ended there. The truth is they would not be created by the screenwriter if their existence would not benefit the progression of the protagonist’s character arc. Perhaps God allows us to meet people for various reasons. One would temporarily pass through our lives to leave unforgettable lessons, or loyal companions who’d stay until the end credits roll. Both are imperative for someone’s growth.

From a structuralist point of view, life like a movie is comprised of dichotomies. Choose if you want to be the hero or the villain. Choose between good and evil. Choose between love and hate, perseverance and apathy, optimism and pessimism, prosperity and poverty, victory and defeat. Choose if you will dwell in the pain of yesterday or savor the brand new promises of tomorrow.  Choose to embrace the plot twists and they will surprise you!

Choose between spectatorship and authorship. The former asks you to sit back and passively view what life throws at you, while the latter invites you to rise up again and actively create the path where you want to go in accordance to the purpose that He called you to be. Here, I win.

Gone are the days when we could be mere spectators of our destiny. You are the auteur of your own movie.

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References: 

Bazin, A. (1967), What is Cinema?, 2 vols., trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Eisenstein, S. (1949). The Film Sense, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda. London: Faber & Faber.

Nietzche, F. (1996). Human, all too human. New York: Cambridge University Press.