Life isn’t a three act story.

It’s so easy to make direct comparisons between our lives and the stories we read in books or see in movies. The problem is that books and movies are microcosms of real life that have a finite time to begin a story and then neatly wrap it all up by the conclusion, often times with happy(ish) endings. This leads us to believe that the mundane parts of our lives are the drawn out middle chapters leading to the seemingly inevitable better things to come. Some justify this through the lens of faith taking solace in some higher power having a very intricate and grand plan that is just waiting to unfold. 

I often find myself thinking of life as a story and I’m beginning to realize that isn’t a fair comparison at all. I’ve spent so much of my life wrapped up in the stories, worlds, and characters of others that it has bled over into my actual reality. The truth is that good doesn’t always triumph over evil, the guy doesn’t always get the girl, and most of our dreams and desires will probably not be fulfilled to the extent that we wish them to be. This sounds very cynical but in a certain sense it is also liberating. Detaching this three act structure from our lives allows us to revel in the anarchy that is our own reality. I’ve often heard the metaphor that we are all walking down a path, which I interpret to be a straight line from point A to point B. Actually, it’s more like a giant maze with billions of people all wandering around trying to find what lies at the center. To each person what exists there is probably different. For some, it’s fame, others money, love, contentment, God, Barney Stinson, 72 virgins, or any number of other things that people strive for.

We’re all playing the same game, but not necessarily by the same rules. We’re all given our gifts, talents, and abilities at birth and left to our own devices to figure out how to best use them to achieve whatever sort of goals that we wish. And from that moment we get so caught up in this idea of the type of person that we want to become and spend our lives in a rat race chasing that identity. Why don’t we flip that script? Instead of living our lives in hopes that one day we can reach that point of self actualization why not make the point of self actualization the life that we are living? It’s a pretty existential notion but you are, who you are, at whatever point you are living. I am here, in Scobey, the culmination of my accomplishments, failures, abilities and talents. I have attained today, it exists and there will never be another for the rest of time. Tomorrow I will attain tomorrow, there will never be another one like for the rest of time. In his book, “Tough Shit” Kevin Smith says that simply by existing we have already won. Before you were born you beat out billions of other applicants simply to make it into this world. The rest, is just a victory lap.