By Diksha Langthasa:
I am no celebrity. And when I have to describe a day in my life, it would be an ordinary day; I would tell you about the first thing I do after waking up, about my duties and how I go about them, what I do to relax, the last thing I do before going to bed, and many more. To put it briefly, everything would be ordinary. The movie, Life In A Day, tells us about a day in the lives of multitudes of ordinary people around the world. The story behind the making of the movie is interesting: Ridley Scott (producer) and Kevin Macdonald (director ) put up a message on a popular video sharing website asking people to send in videos recorded by themselves, about their day on 24th July 2011, answering some questions put up by the director. This is a movie made out of 80,000 different videos from 192 countries. And it shows the essence of life, the beauty of the so called ordinary life.
This is no movie review. I will not tell you how the movie starts, ends and what parts I like and what I disliked. What I can tell is my experience while watching the movie, a journey I am glad I undertook. The movie throughout has candid shots which are filled with soul, moments with which you can definitely relate to at some points, and you discover time and again that all human beings are quite similar (anatomically, definitely, but in other aspects too). The factions caused by religion, political boundaries, race and what not seem immaterial. We all have our fears, we know what we love, what we hate, what we want. Joy can be found in the simplest and most ordinary of things like the flight of a kite, being with someone you love, not in the opulence that greed makes us desire.
The movie also reminded me about the short comings of human beings. Sometimes, we know what we want, and we fail to act on that. We may resort to blaming misfortune or find another scapegoat. But the truth is, we are our own source of incapacitation. No advantage or disadvantage by birth is too big to determine out course. It is our own will and drive that will set the course of our life. When we lack either, we don’t reach our potential. What ifs and should haves may become part of our sentences. Life will not be so interesting any more. The day anyone accepts this truth, I believe lives will become better.
So it is in our hands to make the change. Change in us, around us, anywhere and of any kind! Use the power in You. It is only this way that one of the last thoughts in our mind at the end of the day will not be of regret. In the last shot of the movie, a girl confesses how she doesn’t feel special everyday, how 24th of July 2011 was not such a great day, but she also admits that she made it a great day by doing one thing: recording the video and coming face to face with the truth. The truth that as said above, the power is in us, that life is in our hands to make it special.
Life is made of the days we live, but it doesn’t mean that those who live longer have lead fuller lives. We live a complete life when we treat each day of life as the last, when we leave nothing for tomorrow, and there is no night when a voice in your head says, I should’ve done that. And I am saying should leave nothing for tomorrow because each day presents to us new opportunities, new obstacles, taking care of a cumulative of previous days, becomes a complex affair for us human beings.
I may have repeated myself a lot. I may have also “packed an old wine in a new bottle”. But this lesson of life is so important, and there are so many who are yet to learn, that the more it is repacked/ reiterated, the better. This lesson needs to be sent to everyone in any way. You may write about it again. And maybe that way you will change someone’s life. This movie: Life in a Day, changed mine.
You can watch the movie right away by visiting:Â http://bit.ly/sKEcAy