If our lives were all Truman Shows
Each one of us is but a TV channel of a one-person reality show that commences with our squalling arrival to the stage, Earth, and ends with only one cast on the grey screen of our gravestone. A plethora of Truman Shows. There are 7,763,586,910 of us, worldometer tells me, as I type this, live streaming reality show every day. Our viewers, I imagine, are not us nosily watching the shows of others as in The Truman Show, but rather God, His Angels and Demons, and those who, upon closure of their shows, cross to the other side of the show. Ensconced in heaven, they flip through us with attention their remote control to see what is on that would be of interest, meaning and significance to them.
I wonder if my show has ever been of interest, if the viewers could stand watching it for more than twenty seconds (by second I mean in earth time, of course, and not in the Lord’s time where His one day is our 1,000 years). I suppose there have been a few standout moments such the day I was trying to work up the courage to walk up to Nina, after long time of chickening out, and tell her how much she meant to me. Or the time I was struggling with the death of my childhood friend. The TV rating of these episodes must have been high, for I could almost hear them cheering me on.
I still wonder though if the overall life time view of my show sucked like the life time views of my stories on Medium ( only polite 51 views of my friends on Facebook for 5 stories).
I shared these preoccupation with a friend who has philosophical propensities (that is a euphemism for nerd). Her first response startled me: “Maybe you are a side character in your show”.
It never occurred to me that one could be any other than the main character in one’s own show.
Hmm… My show certainly revolves around me. That much I was sure. But that does not necessarily make me the protagonist, does it? I am merely a camera angle, a point of view, a perspective. The thought that one can be just a perspective, a limited third person perspective in one’s own precious existence is frightening. Yet, I fear that is what most of us are. We become the equivalents of TV channels that broadcast shows of other channels because our life is dull.
What is even more pathetic is when we pull a couch in the middle of the stage we are to act on, slouch on, folding our arms, and grow into the couch watching other people act. This is dying before death.
Life is a show. We are here to act, express ourselves, and in so doing, exhibit the light in us. The day we cease to act and show this light unto others is the day we die, a spiritual death such as our progenitors did on the day they ate of that tree.
