Contents
Are we the ones who create our own monsters?
Psychology
We must ask ourselves the why of our fears, not the who
Monsters Inc. is one of the most famous Pixar films. Part of the movie takes place in Monstropolis, a small city populated by monsters whose main source of energy comes from the screams of children. Their biggest energy supplier is Monsters SA, the factory that teaches monsters to scare children.
In real life there are disparities of opinions about whether “Monster is born or monster is made”. Curiously, these opinions are closely related to the questions we ask ourselves when faced with an act that we consider bad, which can basically be two: Who is responsible? o What is responsible?
If the question begins with “who”, there is little we can do, but if we ask ourselves what … there are many answers …
And one of those answers is the movies we watch. And it is that although we see the movies only as a form of entertainment, the reality is that they are also a source of information. When we watch a movie, somehow also nwe see you in it and we learn through it, what we like and what we don’t. But unfortunately most of the movies we see base their argument on fighting bad guys, not fears … And so it goes, we spend our lives looking for culprits and no remedies.
Could it be that we are the ones who create our own monsters?
Searching for an enemy
And it is that when something breaks, we tend to look for an enemy. And that would not have any inconvenience, if it were not that every enemy needs a victim and that victim in the end we end up being ourselves … look for enemies in our stories we become our own victims.
Also, if the other’s fault, I’m at his mercy and I can’t change him … What if instead of creating monsters we dedicate ourselves to finding heroes? The trick is very simple. In the face of something that has happened instead of looking to blame the other, we can try to find what there is of responsibility in usWe no longer give power to anyone, we keep it to ourselves, and we can learn and have more references in such a situation … And if we cannot avoid a similar situation, at least we will face it with more resources.
Maybe that’s why one of my favorite superheroes is Batman. Although somehow he has plenty of super, since he was not born with special genetics, he did so with a particular gift: that of facing his fears. And it is that Batman decides to call himself that because as a child he fell into a dry well full of bats that attack him, so, as a symbol that there is nothing that gives more power than facing his own fears, he decided to use as a name what most feared.
Each one chooses the end of his story, I am left with that of a child who, seeing Little Red Riding Hood in a theater, got up, gave the wolf a hug and told him that he could no longer be bad because he loved him. The end. Because the opposite of fear is love, always. Loving is brave.
- Diana Orero, a specialist in identity and narrative strategy, is the author of «Everything Counts. Find out how to tell (you) better stories ». She is also a teacher and director of Stellium.es.