He was sitting alone in the compartment of the ICE. I reckoned him to be around 68. Lower middle class, upward tendency. We soon started talking. He told me about his family life and that he had worked as an express train driver. In reply to my question whether he had experienced an accident involving physical injury he told me about a suicide who had jumped in front of the train and whom they could only “scrape off”. Passing by this place later he saw – as he said literally – the ghosts dancing. However, that was only one topic we discussed that seemed definitely concluded for him. Bullying at work, the career of the kids, his hobby, collecting wooden tools, as a young man he had helped building a big station, waves of headaches he had had for years…a very unique life unfolded itself in this hour (I myself had interspersed the conversation with stories of my life).
Material for an academy award winning movie? This man had experienced adventures, though he would probably not call them like this. He had been a hero, at least in the bullying story the way he told it. For sure, his family would provide more material, e.g. how he had met his wife (he didn’t tell me about this) or the professional career of his daughter.
Life has not necessarily been easy to be beautiful. Even failing can blossom.
The view of the screenwriter, the filmmaker, the photographer or the poet, who sees the uniqueness through the right “camera work” und makes it visible or finds the right words, is necessary. Sometimes, a new heading or another focus is enough and an event in life gets a new face.
Basically, it is possible to turn everybody’s life into a movie deserving an academy award.
Putting the apparently inconsiderable life into a new context to give it its glamour.
At the end of a seminar week, the course instructor challenged us to develop a movie title. If we could make a short movie about one of the other participants, based on the insights we had gained of him during the last days, what would we write on the film poster?
Here some suggestions: “The secrete of the seven glass doors”, “Dances with hummingbirds”, “I always pay in cash but only with thoughts”.
Naturally, the people concerned wanted to understand what the person had thought of. Will they ever forget this title?
When searching for “material for the script”, I don’t remain alone, I take the other person with me.
Like this, I share my discoveries about his life, about prepared ways that could wait for him, about my amazement, my appreciation of what he has been through and what he has achieved and about what he has or knows to do that I don’t have. Here is also a place for my questions, where he gave up, where he resigned, and my concernment, where he has been at the hands of history, of fate, victim of power or arbitrariness.
Key questions help that the known suddenly shines in a new light or the forgotten becomes visible.
What is/was beautiful in life?
What would you like – if possible – to experience again?
What was difficult but is good today the way it is?
What does a new heading for a period of life or an event effect?
A heading that arouses curiosity! (The artist Joseph Beuys labelled an old enamelled washbowl with “foot washing”, a piece of art was born that you can find today in a museum).
- “Manager of a family company” sounds immediately different than “housewife”.
- I can take a decision: Was my time in school a daily fight for the sufficient grades or brave survival training without giving up?
Maybe I suggest the possible suitable film music for today. Suitable colours. Suitable flowers. A representative tree.
Giving these impulses is like pointing out something beautiful to somebody: there, look, a flock of birds…smell the lilac!
I cannot always share all of my perceptions, questions, ideas, hypotheses or changes of perspective about the unique life of another person with him. However, due to this, my personal perception of his life gets flavour, colour and beauty.
Lived art of life exercise:
- Pick the suitable film music with somebody for his previous life.
- From approx. 1425/26 – 1806, every inhabitant of two poorhouses in Nuremberg was portrayed with an image in addition to biographical information. Take a look at this gallery of different people of almost four centuries under www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de. A great, unique life is behind each of them,.
“Life consists of many small coins, who knows how to pick them up, has a fortune.”
Jean Anouilh (1910-1987), French play writer
“Four monks are sitting together when the light suddenly turns off. The Augustinian begins to philosophize about light. The Benediction thinks about the darkness. The Franciscan falls asleep. Suddenly, the light comes on again. The Jesuit had turned it on.”
Source unknown
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