The Loop

(1 min read)

Does this happen to anyone else?

When I’m watching a movie on my phone that I shot myself, I tend to laugh in the same spots and in the same way as I did while filming the original video. The end result is an echo of myself, past and present.

I like that this happens. It tells me that my laugh is genuine and that I’m fully experiencing the moment all over again. It’s crazy; I can watch the video over and over and I’ll laugh (or at least have the urge to laugh) in the same exact place.

But it’s startling at the same time because it signifies that the world isn’t entirely open-ended for me, that I’m on my own very specific course that’s as predictable as the sun rising and setting every day. If given a set of circumstances, I will respond in the same exact way, nearly every time. Like I said, it’s a bit maddening.

I don’t think many of us want to be predictable. I know I don’t! We’d like to believe that every moment is new and that our reactions are limitless, that we can choose to be who we are at any given time, that we are not merely a product of circumstances dictating clusters of behavior.

But we are just that: complex yet simple, intricately designed but broadly defined, deep thinkers with small parts, open yet closed as hell, traveling the world one foot at a time, on a thin line that loops back on itself.

That’s just the truth. If you want something fresh, you have to actively not make the loop and that can seem as hard as keeping the sun from dropping behind the horizon.