We've all seen it. That moment in that one romantic movie (you know, the one- that one that’s identical to all the others), when the main character stares absentmindedly, voicing out a famous poem:
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move…
She looks up to the wonderfully lit starry sky and enacts that self-proclaimed depth that quoting Shakespeare induces in any one of us mere mortals. That’s exactly when her true-love-to-be will interrupt and finish her verse:
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
Their eyes meet seconds before their lips do and the perfect romantic music queues in, hence validating the veracity of this scenario in time.
Movies are here to portray a much more aesthetically pleasing and romanticised version of events in real life. A tale of beautiful people falling desperately in love, of happy endings, of dramatic death scenes so beautifully shot one can’t help but fantasise of your own personal fate to be as jaw-dropping as that one final death scene - a perfect last line uttered in life to be recorded for immortality.
Art is here to enhance reality, to shine a light on it, even when we can’t see the beauty in front of us. Yet it so often forgets the micro-moments that compose our daily lives, the details that end up building our reality. And just how perfect each and every one of those can be.
It’s that cup of coffee you shared one early morning, that moment you confessed your deepest secrets in the low light of a faulty solar light, it’s the way they asked to hold you after you’d exposed how broken you are and the way they held you, making you realise maybe, just maybe, you could pick up the pieces and allow yourself to be loved again. A silent, insignificant triumph that you knew was the beginning of allowing some truth to slip into your usual “yeah, I’m fine” automated response. No, this wasn’t a great story that will play with a perfectly orchestrated soundtrack as you walk happily and smoothly into “ever after”; this is that silent realisation when you see them reading a book, the light shining on the edge of their glasses, and inadvertently allow yourself to think “I could watch them read for the rest of time”. This could end soon, very soon, and probably with a soundtrack with the emotional depth of a Rihanna song played over your car’s stereo. But it will change you, it will make you.
It’ll be that kind cup of coffee as you shared and laughed, that potential you saw, those feelings you couldn’t help as you tossed and turned in bed at 3am after they’d said those three words - the ones you wanted to scream but couldn’t find your voice, dragged down by the fears and history of all of your past burns and scratches.
It’s something. It’s everything. It’s nothing.