Your Life: Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

“Your life is not a movie, Cristina.”

All too often, my high school ex-boyfriend used to utter this sentence in frustration when my idealistic, fairytale notions of how life was suppose to be fell rather short of the real deal.

What he was referring to, of course, was the fact that not everything in my life was going to be picture-perfect and I needed to stop expecting that it would be.

You mean my words and encounters are not scripted, directed and polished by other people in order to ensure that each moment ends in extraordinarily romantic and ultimately flawless bliss?

Darn.

For some reason his words have always stuck with me and recently I found myself contemplating why.

Perhaps, after growing up in the era of Disney Princesses, this was the first time I was hit bluntly with the notion that life doesn’t always have a happy ending?

Or maybe it was the fact that movies provide us with a means to escape the tribulations of our own lives, which in turn makes us want our own lives to be like the movies?

In order to compare real life to movie life it is important to make the distinction that I am referring to the storyline of the movie (i.e. the screenplay rather than the actors, producers, directors, etc)

Screenplays, like lives, have various twists and turns. Some have happy endings, some sad. In my opinion, the three most important features in any successful screenplay are passion, conflict and entertainment

Ironically enough, my views of a successful life aren’t much different.

I have to admit, despite the fact that my ex-boyfriends words have never completely left my head, I often walk down the street listening to my ipod as if it were the soundtrack to my life.

Is it wrong to live every moment with as much passion and emotion as an academy award-winning actor?

And the most important question of all is it immature and foolish to long for that happy ending?

Maybe if people DID believe in happy endings things would be different. Maybe the divorce rate would go down or heartbreak wouldn’t hurt as much. Perhaps once we are faced with the brutal life is not a movie reality we all simply give up. The shock is too intense. The pain is too real.

I like to think that no matter what happens at the end of our lives there is a giant movie screen that replays all of the major highlights. I mean, why not? People believe in crazier things!

Your first day of school to your first day of work, your first kiss to your first love, your lowest low and your highest high each make up a scene in your own personal movie.

Parts of your life-long movie will make you laugh and parts will make you cry.

But no matter what, the most important thing of all is that it is your movie.

You are the star of your own life.

I will live by this motto for the rest of my life, whether my life is a movie or not.