You all know the montage. It’s that part in the movie when everything speeds up, highlighting the weeks, months, or years that the protagonist dedicates themselves to digging deep, working hard, improving their skill. You may also know it by the music which is quicker, hopeful, and full of promise.
The montage always gets me, right there in the center of my being, I can feel the progress, the energy, and excitement of growing power and acumen. This is motivating, so motivating that maybe you leave the theater with a determined stride to take up your cross, submit to discipline, dedicate yourself to the higher calling of writing that novel, running that race, sending more letters, reading more books, volunteering in your community, showing the doubters they were wrong about you, etc. It’s hard to fall asleep in ecstacies like this, but you manage.
The next morning is damp and cold, it’s winter in the South after all, and what’s more? No coffee! After a quick coffee run and some radio news, you’re ready to do your thing. Sitting down with a pencil and paper, surrounded by books and a computer you begin feeling yourself at the center of something great.
You may get through a few days of this before noticing that your first attempts at the epic don’t measure up to your favorite authors, your running pace is slow as mud, volunteering is often a thankless business, and maybe those doubters were right about you. And where’s the music? The dedicated audible theme that lets you, the protagonist, know you’re on the right path? Where is the assurance that even after taking the 7-10 year road of just becoming a journeyman practitioner that you’ll have critical success in your chosen field?
There is none.
You are inside the montage, or more technically you are filming the large scenes that will be edited down to make the montage. Currently, there aren’t enough clips of you doing your thing to even merit a movie. You see, you haven’t done anything yet. You’ve only just begun. The fruits of your labor after 10 years may bring some good things, but what you envisioned ultimately at the beginning of your journey is the fulfillment of a lifelong career, 30-40 years of work.
As Peter Jackson’s Gollum says to Frodo at the mouth of Shelob’s lair, “Go in or go back.” Will you pass into the nightmare? Will you walk into the silence of the tomb with no assurance of ever coming out again? Can you do something else or must you go in? If you can, then leave, go back home, no one but you will know. But if you can’t, and do retreat know that there is a high probability of you becoming a wraith, ghost walking in two worlds, the life you exist in, and the life you want to live in. There is no music in the cave, there are no cameras, pray for the light to guide you through as Frodo did. O Elbereth, Gilthoniel.
If you have no idea what I just wrote please read Tolkien’s Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and Silmarillion. And now, something a friend of mine made, a montage of me and my work talking about patience. I love it, but it is misleading, hence the above warning about the montage. My hope is that the message of patience will be left in your mind far after the music, and excellent film techniques are forgotten.
This video was made by Will Stewart at Nine Eight Central.