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Did you know that every story – a fairy tale, a novel, a movie script or a commercial – consists of the same set of components? This is the formula by which any story moves. Even the plot of your own life! Do you want to know what her secret is? You can draw your own conclusions.
Once upon a time, 2,000 years ago, that same Aristotle observed the 3-step logical system by which everything in this world develops. A little later, playwrights expanded it to five acts, and henceforth all writers and screenwriters use this template to write the next good-selling story. Let’s check it out, shall we?
Now think of any book, TV series, or your personal adventure. And not to go too far, you can trace the history that we are all in right now. Let’s call itthe Pandemic of the 21st Century. So. The curtain opens.
Act 1. Beginning
The hero lives in his own wonderful world and does what he loves, the passion of his life. It doesn’t have to be a job, it could be something personal.
The hero has plans, ambitions, a desire to succeed. The birds are singing, he is full of enthusiasm. At the same time, the hero is imperfect – in some places, on the way to success, he, as they say, overreaches. Mostly in relation to other people.
Act 2. Boom!
What the hero loves most is taken away from him. Some kind of will of chance is introduced, an unexpected turn of events, which the hero certainly could not have foreseen. The hero is shocked and begins to suffer. Following this, the colors are thickening. The world becomes even more unfair, life turns into a depressing wilderness, and the same stick now hits the other end right on the head. There’s a lot of confusion and frustration around.
Act 3. Crossroads
The hero still wants to get his life together and get things back on track. So you’re putting him in front of a choice:
– go down the good road (accept things as they are, act like the Buddha who has attained the truth, and try to use the situation wisely),
– to take a dangerous, irrational, or wrong, in terms of the same moral and ethical principles (to be a bit of a villain in order to quickly get it all back; again, mostly in relation to other people).
The most interesting thing about this act is that if you choose the first path for the hero – the story ends. So, you choose the “dark” track.
Act 4. Experience
Embarking on a dangerous path, the hero gets involved time and time again in stories. It is a chain of events, in the course of which the hero gets bogged down in problems up to his neck.
And this is the main scene of our story.
Act 5. Let’s call it “Catharsis
Confused in his own affairs, the hero begins to think: it is better to act with someone together. Here you are reconciling him with someone, adding to him those very brains from the missed light track, softening his heart. And in general, the hero realizes that the highest priorities in life are the well-being of all, not just him. So he begins to actively agitate the other characters to rally.
So, all the characters in the novel begin to act together, and everything becomes good. The world is saved, the birds are singing again, friends are holding hands, and the main figure of the drama realizes how damn wonderful it is when we’re all together! Curtain.
***
It’s funny, isn’t it? Our whole life is calculated ahead of time by that very 5-act system. But if you look closely at where the legs grow from – so the legs grow from the very moment we choose the dark path. Yes, of course, we can’t do otherwise, and it’s our instinct to think of ourselves first.
But, look. Both paths lead to a bright future, at the end of which we all realize that the most important thing in life is the connection between us, love, friendship, peace, a strong shoulder.
Perhaps it’s time we learned to be smarter and come to this end in a good way? Without suffering or loss. And even if we think it would not be interesting to live that way – oh! – what could be more interesting, more difficult, and more important in life than coming to a good relationship between us?
Perhaps we can learn to rewrite our stories. And they can look different.
