The Big Picture

Did you ever go to a movie and then feel as if you were an actor playing a part as you were walking from the theatre?

Movies are broken down frame-by-frame so that all conflict is resolved in a short period of time. Time is controlled, emotions are controlled, and issues are confronted and defeated.

Love looks better in the movies. The sex scenes are always smoking hot. The fight scenes are always crisp. Men get shot and rub the bullet wound. Women laugh and cry all in one sound.

I think the most weirded out I ever felt after leaving a movie was the first or second Rocky when my date said: "I wish you were built like Sylvester Stallone."

I believe that my answer to that was something along the lines of: "Don't hold your breath on that one."

Yet as I begin the third last month of the most putrid of all years, I've been playing a mental game to try and stay strong. I've been reminding myself at every down-trodden moment to remember the big picture.

This is of course, the first year when the picture seems somehow way out of focus. It's difficult to walk from scene-to-scene somehow feeling more like an actor than a real player in a real live drama.

Yet the goals of life are still there to be had. There are kids to watch grow up. More Bruce concerts. A Few Yankee championships (one is coming this month).

There are real live action scenes, perfect love, and God-Help-Me smoking hot sex scenes.

All right - I got carried away.

Yet the true heart of the matter is that it isn't a play. We aren't merely characters. We are in charge of the script, and how it all plays out is ultimately up to us as long as we can suffer the things that we can't control.

I'll never walk out of a movie theatre looking like Stallone did during his Rocky hey-day, but then again, I can reach the end of the story and still stand proud- all the miss-steps and disappointments aside.

Isn't that what it's all about? Keeping the big picture in focus?