The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 mph

by Shawn Green

As we find ourselves becoming worked up, we remind ourselves, “Relax, it’s just a movie,” and the tension immediately subsides. We pull ourselves together by remembering that we are sitting in a chair fifty feet away from a screen watching actors work from a script. When considered from this perspective, it sounds a little crazy that a projected strip of celluloid can cause us to experience real physiological change due to serious emotions. Of course, getting pulled into the illusory drama is a big part of what makes a movie an enjoyable, compelling experience. The other critical aspect, however, is the realization that what’s happening on the screen either isn’t real or isn’t actually happening to us. It is the existence of this space that allows us to truly enjoy the shock of a horror movie or the sadness of a tragedy. Without it, we’d lose perspective. Likewise, it is space that allows us to refrain from flipping out for thirty minutes just because we run into a traffic jam; it is space that allows us to keep from getting lost in drama, whether that drama derives from a fiction on a movie screen or an inconvenience or disappointment in our own lives.