THE MONTAGE IS FALSE

May 6th, 2018

Movies do us a great disservice. We like to classify such movies as entertainment, but could they be functioning beyond such a deceptively innocent category?

It’s just entertainment. Right?

Or maybe…

From an early age we are exposed to stories that occur completely in just a couple hours. And yet extremely few movies are about a two-hour stretch of time.

They skip all the boring parts.

At the very most: the important, slow, methodical, dull work of attaining the skill, trekking the distance, writing the book, building alliances is crammed into a montage.

Of course, no one would watch a movie that faithfully represented these time-consuming activities. There’s good reason for the montage.

But what effect does it have?

How often is the complaint made that we are a people constantly seeking instant gratification?

A people constantly expecting instant gratification watching stories that show only the humble beginnings followed immediately by the long-term results: for the movie-goer these are instant transformations from non-entity to master, from slave to conqueror, from meek 9-to-5’er to savior of humanity.

Oh but we know it’s time compressed. Oh but we understand how much time, how much effort, how much trial-and-error went into all that stuttering success.

But do we? Does every part of our brain get that message loud and clear?

Or do we deceive ourselves? Assuming we are smarter than we actually are.

Here’s a great quote: “If the problem was just a matter of getting the information, we’d all be billionaires with six-packs.”

The point is we don’t have as much control of ourselves as we like to think.

It’s best to assume with caution: I am probably being influenced in ways I don’t even realize. Hey, remember subliminal advertising? We all know about that? What else is functioning in exactly the same way as subliminal advertising, but isn’t necessarily geared toward selling something? Maybe it hasn’t been consciously geared at all. Maybe it’s just a product of culture that is effecting us in ways never intended nor dreamed…

How do great things happen?

With a bang? Nope.

In the same way that the old woman with the walker looks in the mirror and wonders what happened, feeling that young sex-kitten still alive and aglow in her. The same way the 400lb man looking at his bypass scare wonders how he was once a baseball player.

All this happens because of two things:

Time + a trend.

Great achievements require time and lots and lots of slow dull consistent work. Time is the same for all of it. But here the trend is work.

For the man, the trend is unhealthy eating.

And if a woman can have this routine at 91 years old? No one decades younger should have a walker. 

A trend can also be a lack of something. In the case of the old, frail woman: inactivity.

Given enough time, trends result in extreme examples.

Are you trending in the right direction?

Check now and make changes. Because you can be sure as certain:

There’s not going to be a montage to teleport you to some wonderful version of your life.