Ability to confront your truth & share it with others

Film making is a business of storytelling. But where will we get stories with ability to engage others.

Let us first explore- what is that which engages us as an audience? Something interesting happening in others’ environment, something funny and entertaining, some issues which impact our own life.

Yes, but most importantly, what engages us is, when someone bares his / her soul.

When we are part of an experience of such vulnerability, we are totally captured in that moment. Have we realized that we have the deepest relationship with the person, who has turned so completely vulnerable with us?

Why? Because deep authenticity is the quality of our soul and what touches our soul, makes the most lasting impression on us. We love those people most in our life, who are vulnerable and have nothing to hide.

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt must have made 40 odd films in his long career of four decade as a writer, director & producer, but he will be remembered for only 3 to 4 films wherein he bared open inner most secret of his life in front of his audience.

Whenever he made films taking insights from his personal life, he created award winning & critically acclaimed films such as Arth, Daddy, Zakhm & Woh Lamhe, where he highlighted personal narratives, ranging from his illegitimate birth to his extramarital affairs. The audience too reciprocated his frankness with full empathy.

In the same way, whenever a filmmaker expresses himself with total truth on celluloid, his film is bound to touch many souls and make an everlasting impression.

So, if you are able to confront your own truth and share it with others, irrespective of how ugly it is, you are on the way to be a successful story teller.

Such a simple formula of success- isn’t it? But why is it, that most of us can not adopt this?

How many of us have got guts to confront our own ugly truth? Are we really honest with the mistakes we made or we can give fabulous explanations to ourselves and others to cover our mistakes?

How often we begin to believe in the explanations we have created for ourselves, so that we don’t have to confront the razor sharp truth?

Don’t we tell others, “the reason I fight so much, is because the whole world is bad” and we refuse to look within and acknowledge that the real reason is the accumulated anger and frustration within?

Don’t we tell others “that woman was so manipulative and she turned my life into hell” and refuse to acknowledge that the whole episode happened primarily because we got swayed by our own lust and rejected the girl who truly loved, just because she looked plane and simple.

Don’t we tell others, “my company is exploiting me and being unfair”, while we refuse to acknowledge that I happily accepted a job of lying and manipulating others simply because it gave me higher pay and I refused an honest job, as the monetary rewards were comparatively less?

It is very strange that human being spends energy in avoiding the truth. He can discover explanations to cover the truth and over the period of time, begin to believe that those explanations are the truth. Being honest to our self is a very rare quality. However, what is equally peculiar with this quality is that those who possess it, are abused and side tracked by society to begin with and hence they face failures, but if they persist being honest to themselves; a time comes when they are hugely admired for the same quality.

Most of the human beings do not have the courage and patience to live life truthfully and they rather find it convenient to discover comfortable lies and live their life believing in them. And it is no surprise that people can not relate with them deeply and do not have much interest in their lives, except for some curiosity value. When such people become film makers, their stories can not touch others and hence receive lukewarm response.

Let us look deeper into why we have so much urge to create lies which are socially acceptable, rather than living the honest empowering truth.

We all have a germ inside our being “I AM NO GOOD” and it troubles us constantly. We try to hide it and try to prove to ourselves and to our surroundings that no such germ exist inside us. That is why we keep creating walls of false explanations. We act as a slave to this germ and it dictates the terms, prompting us to spend our life in denying its control over us and make people believe “I AM GOOD”

So what is the way out? This germ of “I AM NO GOOD” destroys itself, if you can learn to live with it, without feeling threatened. Or in other way, living with the knowledge that you are a beautiful person and this germ has no power over you.

When you know from deep within “I AM GOOD”, you do not spend energy in proving anything and have the courage to live the life truthfully, even though people may abuse you with the typical “YOU ARE NO GOOD” abuses. When you live in such a manner, this germ realizes that it has no power over you and one day it decides to leave you. And you discover the high self esteem and you get empowered to deal with life in deep truth and honesty.

Hence, being aware of your own hidden patterns is the key for empowered living. Patience is the quality which nurtures it further.

I invite you to live truthfully and explore the mysteries of life. And to your own amazement, you will discover so much in life, which your would have the deep urge to share. And when you share with such authenticity, you will weave fascinating stories and your audience will be totally engaged in your work.