Real vs. Reality

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN: The Pauper Escapes Reality

One of the biggest issues I have dealt with in my exploration since starting at Second City has been pursuing my dreams.  (But Hannah, that's what this blog is about.  Let's try to be a little more original and less obvious.)  But not pursuing in the physical sense.  Not writing more.  Not quitting my irrelevant job.  Not performing.  I'm talking about the mental roadblock that comes from being raised in a world where being a realist is the only way to logically navigate life.

But reality is boring.

How many times have you thought, "Man, if they made a reality show out of my life, it'd be nothing but marathoning Scandal and spending 10 minutes picking out the pint of Ben and Jerry's I want to binge on whilst I binge."  There is a reason reality television is fabricated.

Reality is boring.

As for the scripted entertainments, they make the doldrums much more interesting.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is really upset that Zooey Deschanel broke his heart.  Let's montage day-drinking and pajama wearing and set it to a catchy little Spoon tune.  (From here on out, Spoon can only refer to their music as "Spoon tunes".)  It's fun to watch other people's misery on screen, and it can even look endlessly fascinating to watch a week in the life of an unmotivated Jason Segel culminating in a staff-pounding Lord of the Rings rage burst.  But when you are doing it yourself, well...

It's boring.

Aside from basic essentials of biologic life (food, water, air), what do we need to survive?  Because, let's face it, spending day in and day out cooped up in your apartment eating, drinking, and breathing does not a life make.  So what else do we have?  Companionship?  Sure.  Without human contact, we have no one with whom we can share our highs and our lows.  But that puts the cart far before the horse.  Because how can we have highs and lows without what I believe is the most important non-biological element of human life: dreams and ambition.

If we live our lives firmly planted in obtaining the most tangible elements, we are denying ourselves the pleasures of pursuit and reward.  I wrote an entry in December about the hopelessness of hope that is fabricated by many films.  But two months later, I'm here to quash that idea.  Hope is the fuel we need to pursue our dreams.  If I don't hope that one day I will be a famous writer, then it will never happen.  In the same way that I used to watch romantic comedies and hope that one day a prince charming figure would sweep me off my feet, I am now able to watch excellent pieces of cinema and hope that one day it will be mine that people ogle over.  I have to hope because the moment that hope dies, the ambition and the dream die with it.  Because in that moment, I succumb to reality.

And reality is boring.