Life is not a movie

Is a video camera as big a revolution as a printing press? I’d be lynched to even raise this question. Yet, given the fact that the latter predates my birth by centuries, as compared to the decades for the video camera, it might be safe to assume that I’ve spent more time watching videos than reading printed text. Now, logically, I know that the printing press caused more ferment than video. Even a simplistic reasoning that printed text will always have a head start of years on video and that the knowledge that led to the video camera is contingent upon printed materials suffices to logically prove which was more revolutionary. But I want to talk about my life.

I have watched more videos than book chapters I’ve read. And videos created a cognitive error in my head. I’ve always tried to emulate the people in the videos. Be it Optimus Prime’s leadership, college romance from a movie, or the mannerism of my favourite news anchor—I have assimilated it all in my life. That is what I aspire for. That’s the bar. I want to sound like that; I want to walk like that; I want to be seen like that; I want to fall in love like that. The problem is that all of it is done for the camera, and I live with my two eyes. A shot from a camera can be edited much later it’s been shot; an argument cannot be edited once it’s been argued. Cameras can be moved in numerous directions to create emotional effects; eyes are limited by human physiology. Scenes have a background score; life doesn’t. A video can have cut shots, transitions, a beginning, and an end, but life has no cuts, no transitions, no beginning, and no end. A video follows a script, but there is no script to life. And my infatuation with videos threw me on a chase to find it.

Videos or photos capture an instant or a couple of them. How wonderful had it been if life had that feature. But alas, life is not a sequence of shots or instants. It’s the camera that breaks this infinite experience, we call life, into instants and shots. And we, the fools, internalised life as a sequence of shots. We started living for the shots and instants. And I committed this sin too, in my own way.

What are memories, or even imaginations of the future, if not shots concocted in mind? Like shots and scenes, they’re broken, patchy, and edited retrospectively. And I’m not just talking about the good stuff, but the bad stuff as well—the traumas, the hallucinations, the worries. There is an editor in our heads, cutting the scenes, adding background scores to them, and feeding it to us. But life is not a lifelong film. It’s different; it is now. There is no director to say cut and tell you what to do. There is no makeup to always keep you looking perky. There is no composer to create your entry music. There is no trainer to keep you looking pumped. There is no art director to blow the wind when you’re in love. There’s no dialogue or screenplay writer. There is no costume designer.