You are the screen, not the movie

I bet there is no mortal on the face of this earth who wouldn’t have felt let down by circumstances at least once in their life. To the contrary, there must have been instances where they have felt extremely elated and content. It is in these circumstances that the majority of us tend to roil in the emotions that flow there from and refuse to accept the old adage “Well, that is part of life!” Instead, we either get bogged down by the negativity or revel in the positivity of the moment and let it consume us. Either way, we become the circumstance or even worse, the circumstance becomes us. Peek into our past and we will find umpteen number of those instances.

Look back at the time we failed to pass an academic test that we prepared for like no other, the time we broke up with somebody who we thought was the love of our life, our worst day at office in our career, the time somebody let us down so bad that we stopped trusting people in general.  I bet we can all share that sentiment wherein we feel so dejected with others, with ourselves and everything around. We fail to think straight and get consumed with sorrow or desperation, which only worsens the situation. Well, the stronger ones get right back up and move on. Do you wonder how the stronger ones do that? I will come right back to it a little later.

Now let us consider the situations wherein we felt extremely elated and on top of the world, like for example we get an unexpected break in our business, we get a salary hike far higher than expected, we inherit an estate from a dead aunt, we develop a winning streak in a sport. We feel so happy that we develop a new vigour and confidence in life which many a time surpasses all the negatives and even throws caution to the wind. We go on a roll and many a times become complacent which will at some point hence, prove to be our downfall. Well, the stronger ones accept the success but don’t get consumed by it. Do you wonder how the stronger ones do that? This is how:

They understand that they are the screen and not the movie! You may ask me what gobble-de-gook that is. Let me explain. When a movie is projected onto a big screen, does the movie screen change shape and size according to what happens in the movie? No. A bomb may explode in the movie, but the screen does not explode. Two lovers may be romancing in the movie, but the screen does not blush. A building maybe on fire in the movie, but the screen does not catch fire. Similarly, our body, our job, our relations, our successes, our failures are all part of the film called life. There is a deeper us within this body. The true us - our soul - the screen! Whatever happens in life, we feel the impact of the events. We feel the changes but ‘the true us’ does not change. The stronger ones understand this and hence assimilate success and failure in equal measure and move ahead in life and are content and peaceful.

So I conclude by leaving you to decide whether you want to continue to accept that you are the movie or to understand that you are the screen, resilient and strong, irrespective of what is screened on it!