Shaun of the Dead

The story told in Shaun of the Dead is the story of us all. We begin our tale as zombies. Not “moaning, groaning, walking with a limp as blood pours from our mouths” zombies, though. At first the ordinary man is the zombie, stumbling through the same routine as our lives rot in a half-living state. We hang out at the same pubs after the same useless week at the same useless job. We become so bored with doing the same visit to our parents and the same dates with our girlfriends that we are dead long before we are placed in the ground. 

But if this life is so awful, why don’t we change? Why don’t we get up and live again? Why don’t we do something with our lives instead of wasting away, day after day watching TV? It’s almost like there’s something there that we cling to. Something that holds us back from really taking our lives by the horns. What is that something that’s missing?

Ambition. It’s that thing that we lack. It’d be nice to have it, but we don’t. We don’t know how to get it, but we know we lack it. We know we need it, we know about all the good places life would take us if we had it, but we just can’t seem to find it still. We can set goals, make plans and the whole nine yards, but they all fall flat because they just aren’t real. What makes them real? Where is the spirit that yanks us out of our dull, dry routines of life and into greater adventures? 

Death. Not just the dark, cold hand that we all associate with that word, but the loss of that which we hold dear. Our girlfriend breaks up with us, and it leads us to stay up until four in the morning listening to really loud techno music. Our friend turns into a zombie and we lock him up in our shed because we still care. People start turning into zombies out in the streets, and we get a plan together before we lose it all. 

Fear of losing something, of sliding backwards from where we are, has a great way of motivating us to move forward. To rise up. But it won’t get us all the way there, it will just bring all our dark secrets out. Maybe not as comedically as everyone spouting off in the pub, but you will find out who people truly are when they are about to lose something precious to them. I know it sounds cliche, but it’s true. Those do-or-die moments have a habit of making, or breaking, people. 

But do we really have to wait until our world is crumbling to get our drive, our ambition, back to where it ought to be? Can’t we learn to circumvent the entire apocalypse somehow? I think so. I think the key is to really dig deep and reflect on why we aren’t motivated. The deeper we dig, the more motivated we can get ourselves to become. We can avoid the end of the world if we end it ourselves and reveal everything that we have been hiding underneath. If we expressed what was truly on our minds, maybe we would get a lot further in life without having to watch everything come crashing down.

And sometimes that means we have to sit down, write the plan, then shut up and execute it. I often wonder if ambition, that drive that some people seem to find, isn’t a matter of finding a deep-seeded reason at all. No, I sometimes wonder if ambition is simply a matter of pure drive. Of saying “I said I wanted to do this, so I am going to do it!” Sure, the plan may need a few revisions along the way, but we don’t completely abandon it. We don’t question what we set out to do, we just do it. I often wonder if even the confidence to go with the plan isn’t just something we build up along the way. Maybe ambition is just a matter of saying “I said I’m doing this, now I’m going to do it!” 

And there will be troubles. You may have to bonk a few heads and fight with a few friends along the way, but you’ll get there. And the weird thing is that where you want to be may not look too different from where you started. Think of it like re-organizing the pantry. You take all the stuff out, you might throw out one or two things, but mostly you’re putting it all back in a way that makes a little more sense. That makes you happier when you see it, instead of frustrated. 

But I think the real reason that things fall apart, the virus of this particular outbreak, is nothing more than a lack of assertiveness. Many of us go along with the things that actually irk us. We put up with our bad stepdads. We defend our deadweight friends and we hold fast to our routines because we can’t stand up and declare that we’d prefer things go differently. Heck, our assertiveness-muscle sometimes gets so weak that we can barely tell ourselves what we want. We become like driftwood in the open ocean, floating aimlessly as we live out our days. Tragic, isn’t it? 

So how do we get out of this mess? How do we de-zombify ourselves and truly live again? Well, if we think of assertiveness like a muscle, then we should exercise it like one! Can you remember the last time you just started working out? The first time you exercise a new muscle, you have to start small. Maybe your first assertiveness-exercise is to say you’d rather go to McDonald’s instead of Burger King for lunch. Maybe you need to cancel going out for dinner  just because you feel like staying in. Whatever the case, find something in your life that you can safely say “no” to, and say it with no apologies. 

And that’s an important thing to remember: people might not like it when you become more assertive. They might get annoyed that you aren’t the same pushover that you once were. That you are suddenly going from being a convenient “thing” that meets their needs, to a person with their own separate desires. But others may follow you. It may be partly because they can see that you are going places and partly because they don’t have any direction themselves. Even if they don’t love the direction you are going in, they will follow because they can’t think of a better idea by themselves. That’s the way life goes sometimes. 

So start saying “no” to things. Eventually, the things you wind up refusing to do will cause something to crumble in your mind and you will see all the things you want to say “yes” to. You will know with full certainty where you want to go and what you want to do. It won’t happen overnight, but oh, it will happen! Eventually your life will kick off, and you will return with a drive that’s stronger than ever!I pray this post ministers to you if you are lost, as I once was. As I still feel sometimes. I pray that things go your way, and that you refuse to go someone else’s. Things will be alright in the end, and you will get to where you were meant to be. Hopefully it doesn’t take a horde of zombies and a few friends getting ripped apart to get you there, though. That part is optional. 

Until next time

May Peace be your Guide.