illusionist!

I am currently dabbling into the understandings of the illusionist's mind.... it's quite illusionary.

For the past few weeks I have found myself getting lost into believing certain things to be true, knowing full well they simply are not. Like the idea that celebrities have it so much easier than us "common-folk" do in our own lives. I could not be further from the truth.

Let's go back a month when it all began, actually let's go back several years earlier... When I was first beginning my teenage years... it brought me great pleasure to put together collages of various celebrities I liked at the time. This changed constantly with each new movie/show that came out. Now, I have a number of completed agenda books full of these collages that mark this time in my life.

I also recall having written in my journal how badly I wanted to be dating Tobey Maguire and therefore was either jealous of, or wanted to be Kirsten Dunst, back when Spider Man was out in Theatres and they were the In couple. He's now happily married to someone else with kids of his own and Kirsten is probably engaged in her own respective relationship. But, coveting the life of others is no way to live. In fact, it's not even living at all- it's grovelling, it's an attempt at trying to find your own (meaningful) existence... one might go as far as to say that one is fully capable of turning into this bitter entity of resentment. I am capable of greater things!

In any case, I idolized celebrities as a young girl. I looked up to them, made them my role models and wanted so badly to be like them. It wasn't until later that I realized I had absolutely no interest in becoming an actress and having my name up there in bright lights (Who's to say it would have even been anyway?). Regardless...

What is it about this kind of lifestyle that makes it so desirable? the Money? the Fame? the so-called Beauty? - These are all conventions the human mind has made important. And they are all based on a form of conditioning and streamlining that has a fabricated premise; a very, very false foundation; a dark and devious misconception; and that is, one where we seek gratification - happiness external to ourselves. How can this kind of lifestyle, correction, perceived lifestyle be one to generate happiness for ourselves?

A side note, Society's understanding of what Beautiful and Beauty is, are so mis-aligned to what Beauty and what it means to be Beautiful actually is, it's laughable and rather sickening... Society's conventions are totally distorted and it has fucked up the human psyche! It has made us believe that we need to be thin to be beautiful, that we need to wear top designer clothing, that we need to wear an x amount of makeup, that we need to be with someone to be happy, that we need to be a certain size, height and weight to be considered attractive, that we need to follow a certain religiosity, that we need to be of a particular skin colour... among an extensive list of other traits that are so incredibly narrow-minded, ignorant, conservative and idealistic.

Lives are all colours of the rainbow and that is a wide spectrum of colours!

Yes, the above is probably outdated in as much as we would like to claim to be more evolved and improving upon the advertising and marketing of particular brands and the media's portrayal of the "good" life. Yet, the stereotypes are still present and very much embedded into the fabric that is the entertainment Industry. So, the complete and total elimination, change over of it if you will, has yet to be seen.

Okay, so now that my earlier years are taken care of and out of the picture, what happened a month or so ago was this... I was watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch, a show that I used to watch when I was younger, but never finished the series. I finished it with glee last month. Yet, what I was left with upon completion was unsatisfaction, and a feeling of emptiness (much like a friends-with-benefits relationship), a feeling of wanting something more - Ultimately, the same childhood feelings of desiring that happy coupledom with another person.

And that threw me through a loop because I thought I grew up and learned how to be better, from not wanting to be an actress; out with the actress aspiration went the ideal, fairy princess dream of the perfect relationship, I thought. It's a fabrication of the mind and I clung to it so much so I stopped dead in my own tracks because the crux of it all is that I would like to find the person I am meant to be with (yes, I believe in fate). And when I see how simply it is portrayed on-screen I fall into the rabbit hole, the trap of thinking it is equally simple to achieve in real life. What I often fail to account for is that there is a team of professional writers that make it look so easy... there is no such team equipped for the writing of our own life stories, we do that all on our own.

This is one of my own illusions- that relationships are easy because quite the contrary is true, relationships are hard work; you have to give as much as you take and if you bend too far you might break... it's a balancing act of trying to find your equilibrium, while the other person(s) find theirs too. I used to think that relationships are easy with the right people. A part of me (if not all of me) still believes this. After all, on the outside looking in, it doesn't look all that hard and it very much comes down to the person you are with and the person you are when you are with that person.

Plus, I feel very strongly that it is realistic of me to believe that having a special someone in your life is achievable. Heck, non-celebrities have it. So the illusion that celebrities have it easier is false... celebrities are people like (most) everyone else and they too go through certain life struggles that others face as well. They are people too, they eat, poop and sleep like the rest of us and we, I forget that from time to time when I choose to put them up on pedestals to which they do not belong. Celebrity life is not a standard! This is an illusion I need to disillusion myself from!

When I get trapped into a belief system after watching a show or a movie, like I did with Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and later with Divergent, than with Men in Trees, and then again with The Hobbit and now semi, although I am currently getting out of it, with Arrow. I feel like it's the be-all, end-all. It's so stupid really to consider celebrities and how perfect their life appears on the outside looking in. This is why, judging them, comparing our lives to theirs is pointless, because we know nothing of their journeys just what we perceive, which is through the filter of the paparazzi and the media's lens of what they want us to see. We don't know who these people are, what they are like and why it matters who they are dating? (Reality Check... it doesn't!) Why do we/I choose to let their life over-power, over-rule my own? Their life has no relevance to mine whatsoever, so why bother caring? I am the one who is living my own existence- all that matters is the way I choose to show up for it daily, very little else counts!

It's funny how seriously engaged I am with all this. Life is too important to be taken seriously. I give myself permission to have fun! And it's so easy to allow myself to get all caught up in this when I am in my own head, however, when I step outside the door, everything fades away & the light of the day, the Sun, magnificent and warm and beautiful shines and I realize how small everything else is.

Also, it does help to realize that all these celebrities are more than their shows they act in. Stephen Amell, the man who plays Arrow is married to someone who I've never heard of before and who is not his co-star on the show, he's 34 and has a kid. Katie Cassidy too has her own boyfriend... and it is very different to make these shows than it is to watch them... there is so much work involved in the creating and the perfecting of the various scenes and stunts, etc. ANd just because celebrities work together doesn't mean they also play together and then get involved with one another.  Celebrities are much more than their characters and we have this very poor habit of living our life according to what is deemed "popular", which is often done by the media and what the "stars" are wearing. Who decides this? Who decides who's hot and who's not? What is popular and what isn't? Why is it so important to be physically beautiful? Something that already is inherently distinct & defined by each individual!

I thought the show was alright at first and now I am the target (in that I have been captured by the entertainment this show provides) and now I consider it to be better than alright, but all it is is purely entertainment. Sometimes, I frequently forget this too.

I went to school and learned to critique things... critical thinking they called it... so when I look at a show like this, I think it's privilege... Not only am I privileged to be able to view it in the society in which I live, but also, the Media itself is built on Whiteness and that's privilege; most of the actors and actresses that play roles in this show are White. They have this presumed sense of superiority and stature that allows them to seemingly walk above the rest, which again has often become the standard to which we live our lives and then we often think difference is deviant, ie not normal and this is something that has come to govern our existence, either overtly, yet mostly covertly.

Not the smartest of concepts to adopt and something so many "White" persons do not even think about because they have that privilege already within their reach.... Is this an illusion too? or something that is all too real?