Unaccounted U's ~ Life Lessons from a Movie Ad ~ A to Z Blog Challenge

When I began thinking about the A to Z challenge, I thought for a long time about what I wanted to write. I tried to think of ways to find neat things about the English language with each letter. And then I thought, what if that letter didn’t exist? So I am doing an abbreviated version of my Life Lessons series that I normally do on Fridays, but without using the letter of the day. What would life be like without that letter? Let’s find out...

An image of a raven. Even the movie poster is creepy. I can't look at it so I won't post it.

We don’t have cable. Instead I watch television shows on the laptop. Anybody that watches television via the internet can bear witness to the repetition of the ads in the show’s breaks. Today I kept seeing a preview for the movie The Raven.

Now I don’t do scary. I don’t do scary television shows, movies, or even books. I even have a hard time with the Halloween episodes of some of my kids’ shows. I don’t do scary at all.

Most of the time I have no problem avoiding it. Even the ads are easily  ignored. Most of the time.

The ad for The Ravenscared me spitless. And it came on every single break in the show. I heard the scream and immediately ripped the headphones from my ears and went, “Lalalalalala” for thirty seconds. If the ad is any indication, the movie is terrifying.

Why do people crave being scared? Why are frightening movies so attractive? I think it makes people feel strong. The adrenaline crawling in the veins, the heartbeat accelerating, the breath catching. It gives people the feeling of accomplishment, I think. As if they were the one to finally fight off the serial killer. We want to feel filled with power while maintaining the safety of the sofa.

I think we do that with life, too. We attend services, send checks to charities, and report a tweet concerning people trafficking and we get a good feeling. Yet we haven’t really done anything. We want the emotional high while avoiding the emotional risk. I’m talking to myself in this post as well. I find myself doing the same thing.

What are we replacing real actions with? What can we do to change that?

Check out other A to Z participants using the link below.