I’M PROBABLY the only one who views the world as an ongoing movie. Perhaps this is because of my amusing obsession with the artistic creativity in movies or merely my tremendously emotional self. Nevertheless, this is how I see the world.
I sit idly in modern cafés, sipping on cold mocha lattes while I watch the movie as it is being lived. Every day, everybody moves in diverse directions, stepping into every morning in their own diverse stories. I often observe the world as it revolves inch by inch around its axis.
Nowadays, the world and humanity have evolved gravely. Whether it is progress or degradation, I am not to judge.
For example, society now deems skeletons as the new beautiful, leaving women with a waistline of more than zero under the category of fat or ugly. Beauty is no longer based on the purity of one’s soul but on the amount of skin one shows in an expensive, underwear-length pair of shorts and a skimpy tank top that perfectly showcases how much food one has avoided in order to impress the judgmental eyes of society. Instagram photos with a hundred and above likes have become the new beautiful and have initiated the new phenomenon called #goals. Beauty is no longer in the eye of the beholder but in the eye of the 60-megapixel smartphone camera and the magical works of Adobe Photoshop or incredible “fairy godmother bippity boppity boo” filters.
The gap between the wealthy and the poor has transitioned from walking distance to a vast galaxy. Billions of people drown in hunger while others swim in the unhealthy junk churned out by restaurants that overprice a dozen minus two of bite-size chicken pieces and huge amounts of salt with deep-fried potatoes. Did industrialization really improve our society, or did it just create a social food chain? Did the gap grow because the rich get richer or the poor get poorer, or does it go both ways?
Yes, those are questions, but your answers are probably concealed in the abyss of your fearful brain. You keep your mouth shut on your opinions because you believe that what you have to say doesn’t matter to the world anyways. We are taught to speak up and let change start within us. By speaking up, does that mean someone will listen, or are we going to be shoved into a dark corner so no one can hear?
By letting change start within us, does that mean the world will change as we change? If you turn on your expensively stretched television sets with HD channels, what do you hear? What do you see? People speak. People talk. Do people listen or do they just hear? Rarely. We open our earbuds only to men and women who have corrupted our minds to believe that only they are right, that only they are to be believed.
We are openly fooled by men and women who have promises buried among the corpses six feet below the ground. We vote politicians that may be better off as Oscar-worthy actors awarded with the most promising acting careers. They most likely took days to engrave in their minds every letter of their captivating speeches and another set of days to watch themselves in the mirror, making sure they trick the masses into believing that their heart is truly sincere. We become horribly dependent on their catchy campaign tag lines more than the beauty of their hearts.
Who can blame society voting unworthy people to supposedly steer the world’s vehicle to nothing but progress and improvement? Most politicians have truly mastered the art of being in the world’s movie to the extent that they can make one good deed for many from the pit of their stomach and not the bottom of their heart—and it can still make everyone drop on their knees to worship them.
Who will listen to a naive, 15-year-old girl rant about how she sees the world? I probably don’t know the world as much as you do. Some might not even believe the credibility of what I write because… what do I know? Who cares about what I think?
Well, doesn’t it scare you a little that through the eyes of a 15-year-old girl, an abhorrent world is obvious already? Doesn’t it touch your soul that what I see is most likely what the majority of the youth are seeing, too? I’m a normal girl in a stereotypical life, but I breathe like many 15-year-old kids breathe. I feel what most 15-year-old kids feel. I must see what most of them see, too.
If the world were a movie, I’d probably be bawling my eyes out right now because the future people in the world’s movie are living in a world where this is how they were carved to believe and this is already the road that was paved for them to take.
Yes, I am speaking up and maybe they will listen. Or maybe they will not. Despite all this, I still trust in the existence of the human race. I still believe that every day, everybody moves in diverse directions, stepping into every morning in their own diverse stories that will pave a path for progress and not degradation. Along with my amusing obsession with the creativity in movies, I also believe in happy endings, and I can only pray for it to come to life in the world’s mysterious ongoing movie.
Today, we live the world. We live in motion in the world’s motion picture.
Raneza Beatrice E. Pinlac is an incoming Grade 11 student of Colegio San Agustin.