Envy

Actors (and “actresses” for the politically-correct uninitiated crowd)… we all envy them, hate and love them as though they were ourselves. Yes, we all see ourselves in the many characters that they play. We follow their every move, news and scandal in the papers as though they really mattered.

Well, I guess in a way, they mattered. Their movies and TV shows are what keep us sane in these days of social madness and upheavals, almost always providing us a place of refuge to hide our daily frustrations and unending sorrows for at least an hour or two to be lost in lives of fantasies and possibilities.

Lest we start condemning actors as sordid characters that have nothing but money packed to the hilt and attitudes as horrendous and the depth of one’s imaginations, I believe that there are lots of good things we’ve failed to see, especially so for those with a regular 9-to-5 office job.

I have seen how hard they work under very tiring conditions for what amounts to nothing more than a few minutes of screen time. If you’ve had the opportunity to be on a set, you’ll definitely know what I mean. Sometimes, I even wondered whether they were human to begin with, what with the amount of mental and physical endurance needed to act.

In addition, many would go the extra mile just to get into character. Whether it be bulking up twice of one’s body mass or trimming down to skeletal frames, doing one’s own stunts or even to sleep and experience homeless street life for months on end, actors are prepared to put their mental, physical and emotional selves through a roller-coaster of sorts.

Now, how many of us are truly willing to do that? We talk about wanting to lose 10 pounds in the next six months, only to resolve it by adding another two, refusing exercise, diet or any form of regiment. Likewise, we talk about the homeless and how we have a grandiose plan to “save” them from their predicaments, only to tell the infrequent beggar to shove off as they’re disturbing our mealtime by haggling us for a handout.

Yes, we talk a whole lot and bitch a lot more about others whom we envy but do almost nothing to improve ourselves to become better human beings. In fact, we often pick the most disgusting and downright inhuman ways to try and get what we want, without paying a whim to the many others that we have to “bury” to obtain our treasures.