There are 2 moments in The Truman Show that come back to me time and again. One is when he talks to Sylvia, the woman he unscriptedly falls for and who tries to tell him his whole life is a simulation the world watches on TV, and the other is when a stage light falls from the “sky” in his simulated universe.
It’s not the warnings Sylvia gives him that alerts him entirely to the lies around him, but it is the meeting itself that stands out to me. Sylvia, the only person in the movie, offers him the only real conversation in Truman’s life. It is the only authentic interaction he’s ever had; the only pull of love rooted in what is.
I use the word ‘love’ carefully. here I don’t mean this as a love-at-first-sight (although, what do I know? I believe in magic). I mean it as that part of us (and Sylvia) that is kind, that has compassion, that knows love means being true to herself and to others.
I mean love as an entity that awakens you with its force to see things for what they are. It is a moment of authenticity (for there can never be love without authenticity) that enables Truman to the world as he’s known it.
The power of a forced and conditioned reality is still incredibly powerful, and even that moment of authenticity cannot magically overturn a willfully-constructed world he’s known his whole life. Denial, after all, is a powerful tool for survival.
It did not surprise me that Truman went back to his “life” and married someone who was paid to marry him for the show, and tried to live life as he’s unknowingly being directed to.
But that pull of love planted a seed in his brain that grew surreptiously every little day. He started going from being perfectly happy to quietly suspicious to increasingly disturbed.
And it is in this disturbance that life—the cacophanous, rich, brilliant, terrifying forest of it—resides.
Truman’s denials were never just the extrernal world manufactured around him, they were also the internal choices he made to believe them. There were moments where the gift of fear and instinct gently knocked on his door but he chose to override the code.
Sometimes I wonder if—in the landscape of internal intelligences that knock on your door with “hey, something’s off, pay attention”—the benefit of the doubt given to others is simply the benefit of comfort you’ve chosen for yourself. We make choices all the time, even if we’re not conscious of them. (yes, yes, I am a Jung youth).
I wonder if I’m in the disturbance right now; if the apperance of someone with authenticity and love that is true to themselves planted a seed that pulled me away from my many, perfectly happy denials. From the denials of who I wanted to be but was pretending to be otherwise. From the things I denied myself from seeking and going after. From my fundamental right to be, belong, and become. My world was not manufactured by someone else, and I’ve made authentic choices with people who gifted me truth, and therefore, love.
But there are parts of myself, big gargantuan trees, that I’ve denied water.
When a series of events unfolded a couple of years ago, I could make no sense of the suffering they imposed. It felt never ending. Like I was on fire and thrown into a world without water.
Then, in the peaceful burning of the disturbance, the light fell down from the sky.
So, in this relentless suffering I noticed an undercurrent in the entourage—a relentless lifeforce surviving the suffering.
I never saw this lifeforce till I sat in the disturbance and breathed in the fake salt of despair.
The light falling from the sky felt like this unassuming life force decided to write me a note, alerting me to its presence.
And immediately, like they did for for Truman, a hundred actors contracted to the benefit of comfort in my brain rushed to justify the event, to numb me again to what I’d glimpsed.
Even now, in this moment, as I write this, they’re collectively trying to drown me in argument; raising their voices with every word I type, like politicians holding on to opinions without data.
But, my friends, a light fell from the sky. There is a before and after to this moment.
I sometimes, see the actors in my brain speaking their lines, the leash of the familiar but harmful pulling at my neck, telling me I can’t cross the bridge (that doesn’t even exist).
I see the people that were, the people that are. The cracks in them, the light in them.
I find my lifeforce smiling at fear without smugness or taunting; just greeting an old friend. For even in the greatest of simulations, you can count on fear to be true to itself, and that is valuable.
My movie isn’t ending yet. I’m still circling the world I’ve imprisoned myself in. I haven’t crossed the water and found the door out of the studio. But now I know it exists.
And I’m going to the top of this mountain, broken legs and all.