It often seems like the time-space continuum is God's prison, that we are helplessly trapped in the now. Behind, the past: mistakes, passed time, empty entertainments, successes that are often proven all too transitory. Before, a future that is blank, dark and frightening enough to support a multi-billion dollar insurance industry.
Most respond to this invisible incarceration by metaphorically curling up in a tight ball, living in perpetual fear of everything. These poor losers hold fast to routine, play insignificant roles in meaningless conflicts... then die forgotten, falsely believing that their crippling inertia has somehow improved the world. Faced with the big picture, they revert to basic animal simplicity: raising a good family is enough, isn't it?
Then there are those who throw off the shackles of their humdrum lives, who take the world by the short-n'-curlies and truly live in the moment. These are the heroes, the winners, the graspers of opportunity. Western societies often elevate maverick individualists to iconic status, inspirational examples of what's humanly possible.
But think about it: how many of your worst mistakes can be credited to living too much in a moment that didn't, couldn't and wouldn't last? Each pledge of timeless love, foolishly acted upon with legal entanglements and doomed offspring. Each roll of the dice or pull of the lever during the lucky streak that was destined to last forever. Each decision that resulted in consequences you were too blind to see.
Many of our collective tragedies of recent times unfolded because we convinced ourselves, and each other, that the magic moment would simply never end. Sure, it seemed at the time that dot-com startups without business plans would rake in endless profits, and some of us even believed that houses could function as bottomless piggy-banks for time immemorial. Don't laugh, it all made perfect sense at one point.
Taking up residence in any kind of moment is just one big tragic trap hiding beyond the confines of a smaller one. It's just like that movie, you know the one where the guy breaks out of the underground prison, only to find that he's trapped on a tiny remote island that's about to be wiped off the map by tsunamis and giant sea-monsters. What, there isn't a movie like that? Well damn it, there should be.
We need something that will uplift the lonesome losers and humble the moment-livers in equal measure. That message in its boring, prose form is this: each of us is a tiny part of something much greater than any of us can imagine, and each of us powers that great something forward with our collective energy. Each of us is a fraction of God. Folks have tried to relay this message by couching it in religion, but those always end up too complicated, time-consuming and corruptible.
Your assignment is this: take this message of hope and place it in a digestible capsule that will transcend language, culture, and limited attention span. Craft it in such a way that will capture the grand sweep of time and space, the microcosm and the macrocosm, evoking a breathless and life-changing response from every viewer.
I imagine that this would be best packaged in something like a short film (10 minutes tops), or maybe a theme park ride. If it were a movie, it would probably be like Koyaanisqatsi but without the subtle politics or fake classical music. And remember that you're aiming for lasting effect here -- the Al Gore method of making people shit their pants over a PowerPoint isn't going to do it.
