Feeding your ego.

Recently I watched the dark comedy Birdman and was blown away with some of the messages entwined into the script writing. As a writer you strive to move your audience and make them feel something, anything.
There was a particular scene between Michael Keaton and Emma Stone that stayed with me long after the movie finished.
We live in a fast paced world, full of everybody fighting to exist and hearts breaking if there are no likes on a photo or no one fan girling over our work.
The trouble is with the rise of the Internet there is so much noise and that it becomes almost impossible to find and have a unique voice and make yourself feel relevant. 

We all want to feel like we matter and we all have an ego to feed. I can admit that I certainly do, there is nothing more fulfilling then a compliment about my work, but what I have learnt is to also thrive on criticism, on self improving and doing things not for the validation but for myself.
To do things that feel good, create things that make me happy without sharing them with the rest of the world. I don’t know why people are so eager to share their personal lives with the rest of the world, there is a lot of power in remaining anonymous.

There is so much freedom in accepting yourself, every flaw you have and controlling your ego, keeping your ego in check, doing things just for you, for no one else but YOU!
Your happiness, above all else is the most important emotion to feed and it is the most important emotion to maintain.
Everything else comes after.

= BIRDMAN SCENE =
Riggan’s daughter, Sam, rips Riggan a new one by explaining some hard truths about how Riggan fits into the relevant works, or rather doesn’t. She doesn’t put it nicely but perhaps that’s what Riggan needs to break out of his ignorance. Perhaps this is what we all need..

Riggan Thomson: “This is my chance to finally do some work that actually means something.”

Sam Thomson: “That means something to who? You had a career, dad, before the third comic book movie, before people started to forget who was inside that bird costume. You are doing a play based on a book that was written 60 years ago for a thousand rich old white people whose only real concern is going to be where they have their cake and coffee when it’s over. Nobody gives a shit but you! And let’s face it, dad, you are not doing this for the sake of art. You are doing this because you want to feel relevant again. Well guess what? There is an entire world out there where people fight to be relevant every single day and you act like it doesn’t exist. This are happening in a place that you ignore, a place that, by the way, has already forgotten about you. I mean, who the fuck are you? You hate bloggers. You mock Twitter. You don’t even have a Facebook page. You’re the one who doesn’t exist. You’re doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter and, you know what, you’re right. You don’t! It’s not important, okay? You’re not important! Get used to it.”