5 BILLION SPLIT SCREENS

You know how in movies they do that split screen thing where you see two characters playing out their individual lives, blissfully unaware of the other person in the screen next to them. Then as the music reaches a crescendo and the sequence ends, they meet and the two screens merge into one? I like to look at that like life…

I wouldn’t say that I am a religious man, by any stretch of the imagination, but if there is a ‘God’ sometimes I like think that he/she is up there, kicking back in this sweet lounge room set up (obviously in a tailor-made velour tracksuit with ‘GOD’ embroided in gold on the back), watching this massive TV screen made of 5 billion of those tiny little split screens. On each of the tiny screens is the view of just one person’s life – their individual reality.  Kind of like the Truman show.

Some of those little screen realities are incredible – full of colour, fun, imagination, play and success. Some of those realities are horrible – full of pain, sadness, bitterness and disappointment. Some of those realities are tiny, lonely and void and some seem to have everyone else’s reality swirl around theirs. Each screen is exactly the same size, but some just seem to be much larger than others. I guess it comes down to the choice of the individual. 

Most of the time the screens are separate, but occasionally, for a brief moment, two screens become one. … you know those times when you are staring into a loved one’s eyes (or even a stranger) and the outside world seems to disappear?

Just for fun (as all exercises in existentialism are…), let’s play God and zoom into one of those pixels. Your pixel. Actually, to add another dimension to this exercise, let’s pretend that sitting next to God happens to be a collection of your ancestor’s souls and a collection of new souls that are yet to be born into the world. All of them just sitting there, watching every one of your moments and learning how to do life (or re-do life).

So God decides to then press this magic button on his touch-screen remote and bam your pixel and just the pixels of those you come into contact with in your life, expand up to a full screen view. So now, your ancestors, the new souls and God are all sitting there watching about 50 tiny screens all shuffle around doing their own thing and one by one, eventually coming into contact with your pixel that is smack bang in the middle.

As an exercise, how would that sight look for your life? Or… framing that question in another way, what percentage of the film would you be happy for that audience to see? 

For me – I reckon about 89% of the time… 

Sometimes I like to think about this for myself and look at who I am in my little pixel. I think about this as my reality. I think to myself ‘how can I make my pixel even more awesome to watch? Even more incredible and unbelievable? How can I make the soundtrack even more inspiring? How can I share a screen with even more unique pixels? How can I surround myself with the most incredible pixels out there and make mine even brighter? Most importantly, how can I get Sienna Miller’s pixel next to mine? 😉

Anyway, my point is, I believe that we live in a world of limitless potential. We are 100% responsible for of the way our pixel is. I want to know that anyone up there watching mine is going – ‘this show is pretty awesome’. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biCBQy3r788&feature=related]