Life After the Adventure…

Every story you’ve ever consumed, no matter the medium, deduces life into a series of moments to convey its message and theme. As story consultant Robert McKee says, “Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion…Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality.” I don’t know about you but the quote is inspiring and frightening all at the same time. It’s inspiring because every story creates a blueprint of how to live life. It’s frightening because there’s a whole lot of parts missing. The plotting of a story very much involves which aspects of the characters’ lives to show and which to omit. That leaves a hell of a lot on the proverbial cutting room floor. I know this from my own experience in writing film scripts and a novel. Every scene in a story must move the plot forward. If it does not, it gets eliminated. Unfortunately in life, we can’t do the same. We can’t skip parts of life that are boring. And neither can we rewind and simply re-live the sections that we found exciting. And yet some people do try to live in the past, a star high school athlete who’s entering a mid-life crisis because he no longer has the same fame from before. And lastly, we also can’t speed up certain hard events via montages. We have to live life in real time. You might think, “well, no kidding.” And you’re not wrong. But I find that most people today, including myself, have an ever increasing need for instant gratification. That presents a major problem because it means we require a constant heightened sense of emotion, even though that’s not good for us. We need the quiet just as much as the loud and exciting. And if you don’t learn to live in the quieter moments of life, you’re doomed. This lesson aims to give you such tools. Thank you for tuning in and comment with your thoughts please!

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Transcript:

“Ever have one of those nights that starts out like any other but ends up being the best night of your life? Mine was June 22nd, 1990. That night was the site of a heroic quest. Our aim? To conquer the Golden Mile – 12 pubs along the legendary path of alcoholic indulgence. In the end we blew off the last three pubs and headed for the hills. I sat up, blood on my knuckles, beer down my shirt, sick on my shoes, knowing in my heart life would never feel this good again. And you know what? It never did.”

That’s a very truncated and slightly altered quote from one of my favorite films called The World’s End. The reason I love this quote and the movie is because it begs to ask the question of what happens after a hyper emotional experience, once we enter the mundane? Let’s explore together, shall we?

I don’t know about you but the quote is inspiring and frightening all at the same time.

It’s inspiring because every story creates a blueprint of how to live life. It’s frightening because there’s a whole lot of parts missing. The plotting of a story very much involves which aspects of the characters’ lives to show and which to omit. That leaves a hell of a lot on the proverbial cutting room floor. I know this from my own experience in writing film scripts and a novel. Every scene in a story must move the plot forward. If it does not, it gets eliminated.

Unfortunately in life, we can’t do the same. We can’t skip parts of life that are boring. And neither can we rewind and simply re-live the sections that we found exciting. The character that delivers the quote I opened up with in The World’s End is living in the past no different than a star high school athlete who’s entering a mid-life crisis because he no longer has the same fame from before. And lastly, we also can’t speed up certain hard events via montages. We have to live life in real time.

You might think, “well, no kidding.” And you’re not wrong. But I find that most people today, including myself, have an ever increasing need for instant gratification. That presents a major problem because it means we require a constant heightened sense of emotion, even though that’s not good for us. We need the quiet just as much as the loud and exciting. And if you don’t learn to live in the quieter moments of life, you’re doomed.

Imagine this: you’ve been working extremely hard on a music album. It takes years of work to write and recording it. You finally put it out and for a few weeks it hits the top charts. You end up touring the album for a few months. All very exciting stuff. Now what happens once that’s over? What would you do? How would you remain happy without those external factors?

You could write another album but if your aim to to recreate the same magic as before, you won’t succeed. You’ll end up depressed and miserable. You need to find a way to find joy in the everyday.

See, whenever we go on a creative journey, like writing an album, and we complete it, it alters us forever. Our old normal will no longer do. We must find a new normal.

Many people have a problem with the ending of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, citing that it’s too long and has too many endings. I’m not arguing that’s not the case, but I will argue that each of those was required, especially Frodo’s ending. He’s our primarily hero—the ringbearer. Frodo is a cautionary tale to all creatives. Frodo went on such a life altering journey that he sadly never found a way to integrate himself back into the Shire. As such, Frodo departs for the Grey Havens, which to me has always represented paradise aka heaven.

That’s very poetic but not really how life works. No matter what happens in our lives, we must find a way to integrate back into our daily lives. You must create a new normal.

Here’s other concrete examples of life altering moments many of us will face in our life times: a job or career change, a wedding, a birth, a funeral of someone we love and so one. Each of these milestones alter us irrevocably. Each of these is emotionally charged to the Nth degree but as with all things, they too shall pass.

So how do we deal with this? Well, first it’s understanding that this is how life operates. It’s why I’ve been so heavily front loading this episode with all these notions. You and I must understand that life is a series of moments and it has ups and downs. There’s never going to be a magical conclusion to our life where we live happily ever after.

If there is such a thing as an ending to your life then it’s simply called death and you shouldn’t be rushing towards it.

The key to all this is to love the process. Let’s go back to the example I gave about the musician. After his first album’s tour, if the musician truly loves writing music and the creative process then going back and writing a second album shouldn’t be a problem. The focus for the musician is the creative aspect rather than the rewards of having written the music. When we’re fueled by our need for instant gratification, we’ll never succeed at being happy.

That’s how we must approach life. If you see life as a series of moments, flowing like a river, you can start to appreciate life for what it is, rather than being frustrated by what it isn’t.

It would be fantastic if all of us could hangout all day, every day with our friends, drinking and traveling, etc. But it’s just not in the cards. And even if it was, would you really want that? Honestly, would you?

For a long time, my biggest problem in life was I was a completionist. Whenever I had something to do, I obsessed about getting it done. Getting tasks accomplished is by no means an insidious trait. But when it becomes an obsession, it’s a problem. What I learned from my experience was that no matter how hard or fast I worked, there was always going to be new tasks that took came down the pipeline. For whatever reason, knowing this simple truth took me years to learn. But I know I’m not the only one. Once I learned this fact, I no longer fretted. I worked hard to get things done but I didn’t stress. And if some things were left undone, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Another manifestation that happens when people can’t learn to love the process or unknowingly crave for instant gratification is they’ll create bad habits. They’ll say they’re too busy to get things done yet they’ll always be checking social media or browsing through meaningless websites.

Or they’ll constantly call friends to hang out with, potentially spending money they don’t have, in order to feel a certain joy.

The real joy of life is gained through meaningful work. This other joy is you avoiding aspects of life you don’t want to deal with. I’m not saying to not hang out with your friends, but question your motive. Too often I see friends hang out without actually having a meaningful moment. It reminds me of the song “Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel. In it there’s a part that goes:

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

That’s the real point of this lesson. For you to be able to enjoy every single moment of your life. The grand ones as well as the small ones. Enjoy the big things in life as well as the small things in life. Because when you do, you’ll be much more present. You’ll be much more happy. You’ll be way more connected with people around you and be able to make the type of art that you truly thirst to make that resonates with many people across time and space. Doesn’t that sound like something you want? It’s certainly appealing to me.

To begin to put this lesson to practical use, I challenge you to sit with silence in your day. When you go in the shower, don’t play music. When you eat, focus on eating. Don’t have the TV on in the background. If you’re in the car or on public transportation, spend at least 5 minutes with the natural noise around you rather than drowning it out with the radio or YouTube or whatever. Share your experience with this challenge in the comment section.

It’s going to seem strange at first, but if you don’t learn this skill of sitting calmly and comfortably in silence, it’ll come back in a very negative and major way when you least want it. I’m not trying to scare you though. Instead, let’s refocus on the positives again. By going through these steps, you’ll feel much more a part of this world. That might not sound beneficial, but trust me, being connected to the world would have truly benefited those who’ve committed suicides or those who’ve enacted mass shootings. We could all benefit from being present in the world and knowing it flows like a river. It has its ups and downs and they’re all there for us to enjoy rather than skip from one part to the next.

As much as I love storytelling, it is the one inherent problem of storytelling: it creates this odd deep-rooted idea that life doesn’t contain mundane moments. Embrace them and your life will be truly more fulfilling.

That’s it for this lesson. But please feel free to click over to any of the numerous lessons I’ve created just for you. I have so many you can check out along with other free resources. All you have to do is go to my website at philsvitek.com. And if you prefer to learn by reading, I’m thrilled to announce that I will be coming out with a book that not only teaches my principles but also provides exercises so you can put these ideas into action. Follow me on social media for upcoming details on that. Lastly, a huge thank you to the people that helped make this episode financially possible. If you too would like to support this show, you can either head on over to my Patreon or sport some merch from my store. Links are down below as well. Or you can just tell a friend about this show and we can build a great community of like-minded creatives. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to tune in. I’m @PhilSvitek on social media and I’ll see you next time.