I Hope the Apocalypse Has a Good Soundtrack

One of the hallmarks of movies and television is compressed time, telling a story in a few hours that would take months or years to unfold in life. Compress time is intrinsically exciting, but I wonder if it has a detrimental effect on our ability to observe change in our own lives.

Movies has been described as "life with all the boring parts cut out". The implication is that only certain moments matter in our life, and the rest is inconsequential.

To apply this to a character-based movie, it means that all it takes for the character to change is a powerful moment or series of moments. A dramatic argument, an epiphany, a chance meeting, a death. The difference between a cheesy movie and a great one is how many of these moments are in the movie, one or 12.

This notion, that a particular moment can spur great change in our lives, has been romanticized and reinforced by our culture. Have you heard of Jim Carrey writing a $5 million check to himself when he was a struggling comic? A few days ago, Juan Dixon of the Washington Wizards pleaded with his coach to have faith in him after struggling for three straight games. He scored a career-high the next night! And what is a memoir except a collection of these moments, their importance perhaps heightened?

Moments like these make great stories and allow us a simple way to be inspired by and understand the lives of ourselves and others. Dramatic moments are why people watch sports. But the idea of the "big moment" masks the reality for most people, that change in ourselves occurs through hundreds of interactions on the time scale of months and years, not single events or interactions.

Stories like these are symbols of change and the hard work it took to achieve it, but I think this point can be forgotten in the hunger to believe that one's life can instantly change. That writing the check was what made Jim Carrey successful, not the years of work before and after it.

And the detrimental effect a "big moment" orientation may have is that it may make it harder to spot not only the improvements in our own lives and character, but the decay as well.

It is the idea of gradual decay that has preoccupied me for the past few months. I have noticed it in my life, particularly in the sophistication of entertainment I choose. The decay has been going on for the past few years, a little every month, but it has just been recently that the situation has reached a point to push itself into my conscious.

I'll write about it in a few days. Assuming there aren't any good movies on.