Shy and introverted students should never think their lives can’t feel like a movie. Anyone can make friends through the mindset of an adventurous character! Take me for instance, a shy, geeky 21-year-old girl waiting for her life to turn into the ultimate film that lasts forever.
Life can be “Perks of Being a Wallflower” or even “10 Things I Hate About You,” but the problem is how? How do people create lives like the characters in those movies with total ease? Is there a certain “canon event” that needs to occur for something like this to happen?
Every story needs an inciting incident, such as Harry Potter finding out he’s a wizard, Coraline finding the portal to a completely opposite world of her own or Ladybird jumping out of a car when an argument with her mother takes a turn for the worse. There is always going to be a “canon event” in someone’s life; for me, it started on Sept. 14, 2023 at 10:04 a.m. when a tree fell onto some power wires causing the entire town of Madison––including all over Drew University––to lose power, according to Tapinto.net. It took only 10 seconds to force myself out of the hermit shell that is my dorm room and become friends with the people on my floor. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.
I vented about how my laptop needed to be charged, and that I was inconvenienced by the power outage, and the people on my floor were extremely eager to help me. They started to invite me to sit with them at dinner, to come over to their dorm room every night, then to go on C-Store trips at midnight and walks around the town of Madison.
If it wasn’t for the power outage, I wouldn’t have found out how most of the residents in my building are actually in their 20s, not 18-19 year old sophomores. I found people who turned out to be a lot like me, an old-fashioned and adventurous person—a.k.a. the recipe for every successful and inspiring movie. The power outage gave me the opportunity to find my people, and have my main character moment.
So what is the point of all of this? You are the main character in your own story whether you like it or not. Take any event as your inciting incident, both the good and the bad. But you do not have to wait for a major incident to be the start of your ideal movie timeline. A power outage does not have to be your “canon event” in order to make friends—the whole world can create their own “canons” if necessary. If anyone can romanticize life to its fullest, they can treat it like it’s a movie. Being a main character means not being someone who sits around waiting for things to happen, but getting out and finding the thrill in seeking enjoyment by meeting people and having adventures of a lifetime!
Dalila Benmakhlouf is a sophomore majoring in English Literature and minoring in classical studies.
Featured image courtesy of Openverse.com.
