Get a 3D Life!

Last weekend I watched my first film in 3D - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

In order to fully enjoy the film - and the 3D experience - I went into the cinema with nothing on my mind, no pre-conceptions, just an anticipation of the 3D sensual experience; which for me is all things visual, auditory and kinaesthetic.

Interestingly, afterwards I couldn't really put into words what the experience had been like, or what the film was like - rather than what it was about. There was something akin to listening live to a huge symphony, as the experiential canvas which the film is laid out upon is vast.

The thing is - because it WAS all new for me, and I went in with nothing on my mind, there were absolutely NO comparative references there for me to run my experiences past. Hence I struggled to describe it afterwards and - to be fair - I struggle to describe it now.

Interesting and curious as this might be, it is not the point I'm looking to illustrate here.

On my way into "the screen" the was a large hopper containing the 3D glasses and from which I was invited to select a pair. I say 'select' - however they were all the same so it was a case of 'take one'.

Familiarity versus Novelty

Now, there we all are - the audience - sat wearing our uniform glasses having this uniform film experience enhanced into something richer and more meaningful for each and every one of us. The thing is, each and every one of us had a different experience which was framed by our own references both before, during and after the performance.

Now I know that if I was going to watch the film again that MY experience would never be exactly the same - the only thing that would be exactly the same would be the glasses and the film. The other thing is that because the canvas of the film is SO vast that I would see and hear things I'd not noticed first time round, and that my kinaesthetic experience would be altered as well.

And all this would happen EVEN IF I could go into the cinema in exactly the same frame of mind that I did last weekend. The only 'familiarity' would be the plot and the sequential chronology of the scenes. There's an interesting question here in that, how many times would I need to watch the film before 'familiar' tipped the scales versus the 'new' - and as a consequence would I then have no further need to watch the film? Or would my wish to revisit and re-encounter and re-familiarise some of my earlier experiences override the lack of novelty?

Starring in our own Bigger Picture

They say "Life is for Living", and I think the message in it for us is that we need to get out there and fully experience a sensible balance of the familiar and the novel - and the key word for me is FULLY. Every day we need to remember the metaphor of the hopper of 3D glasses and take a pair and put them on. We are conscious - this is not our dreamscape - and we need to allow ourselves to wear the 'enhancers' in order to enrich our experience. Some people are able to encounter more new experiences every day than some others will encounter in a lifetime. Its all about having an open mind - of wearing the enhancers - so we can notice more, and also enrich the world with our presence in it.

When I hear the phrase "Get a Life" I hear it as an invitation to get out of our heads, switch off the filters that generalise, distort and delete, open all sensual channels, put on the enhancers and experience as much as possible. Being in our own film, if you like.
But we can't "Get a Life" if we are stuck in our own sense of inner ego, rather the same as if last weekend I had gone to watch the film (a) with things on my mind and (b) without wearing the glasses. The film (or Life) would have been all that it was going to be - my experience of it would have been (by comparison) dull, meaningless, not much of a pleasure - in fact pretty Lifeless all round.