Category: A Spiritual Look At All Forms Of Entertainment…

I watched an episode of the dystopian Netflix television series “Black Mirror” not too long ago titled “Nosedive” that dealt with a future where social media governed just about every single aspect of one’s life, especially their socioeconomic status.

In this future society, through the use of eye implants and mobile devices, every person spent the majority of their day sharing their daily activities and rating their interactions with others on a scale of one to five, thus always being able to affect anyone’s overall rating.

The episode revolved around Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard), a woman who had worked hard to achieve her 4.2 rating. Her goal though was to reach 4.5, because that was the only way she was going to be able to live in a luxury apartment complex that essentially required a 4.5 rating for all its tenants. To achieve her goal, Lacie begins to solely focus on gaining the attention of the very highly-rated. During this process, she constantly scoffs and relatively ignores anyone with a lower rating than hers. But when her popular childhood friend Naomi (Alice Eve), with an almost perfect rating, suddenly likes a picture Lacie purposely posted to gain her attention, seeing they had stitched it together as kids, Lacie becomes ecstatic. That feeling soon turns to total elation when Lacie receives an invitation to be Naomi’s maid of honor in her upcoming wedding. Little does she know though that Naomi has her own hidden agenda going on, as she was told that offering charity to someone with a lower rating will boost her own rating even higher.

Oblivious to Lacie though, this is just a dream come true, as her attendance all but guarantees her that coveted 4.5 rating. Unfortunately, when the day of her flight arrives to head to Naomi’s wedding, things start to fall apart for her. It begins when her brother gives her a negative rating after she causes a big argument with him and is soon followed by another negative rating by a passerby she runs into outside, as she spills his coffee. Eventually, as one mishap after another leads to one negative rating after another, Lacie gets contacted by Naomi and told not to come to the wedding because Lacie’s rating has dropped down to too low of a level. But out of sheer desperation and frustration, Lacie eventually shows up anyway to the wedding and pulls a Bridesmaids movie-moment meltdown that causes her rating to plummet to zero. She’s ultimately picked up by security because of it and brought to prison where she’s stripped of all technology and the inability to ever rate anyone again. There she meets another prisoner across from her cell, who too has been stripped of the same ability. Yet because of all she’s been through, the episode ends with Lacie finding solace in finally being able to carry on an unfiltered conversation with someone else, seeing that she no longer has to worry about being negatively rated by what she says or does.

Can you imagine a society like this? I can, because honestly, don’t you think our world is already heading in this direction with one technological advancement after another, especially in the social media realm? After all, how many Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or YouTube followers one has is becoming extremely important to far too many people and these are instantly accessible on a number of hand-held devices that can go with all of us pretty much everywhere these days. And the more followers one garners in any of their social media presences, the more money, popularity, and opportunities in society seem to come their way.

While I truly hope our world never fully ends up becoming like what Lacie faced in “Nosedive”, such as having to hold a specific rating just to get on a flight or rent a good car, I’m still concerned our society is already rapidly heading in that direction. People tend to spend so much energy now on things like how many friends they have or how many hits a picture or video gets that they posted and regrettably, I often find myself being one of them.

Yet, I know it’s all an illusion and my Higher Power continues to remind me of this. In reality, I know that my social media presence doesn’t really matter, even if the rest of the world might seem to feel otherwise. Rather, I think what truly matters is having an unconditionally loving heart and being true to oneself no matter what. But In a world where social media is becoming more and more of a thing that governs one’s socioeconomic status, as it was depicted quite clearly in this Black Mirror episode, people aren’t being true to themselves as much anymore and on some level are living with judgmental minds instead of having open hearts.

So, in light of all that, it seems like we each have a choice now, don’t we? We can choose to focus all our energy on raising our social media presence or we can choose to focus all our energy on raising our connection to something much Greater that loves us far more unconditionally, even if we have very little followers in the social media realm. While choosing the latter may end up leading to a relatively invisible existence, at least in the eyes of the majority of society, I think in the long run, this choice will lead to far more peace and joy than chasing a life of having high ratings and presences on social media platforms.

Peace, love light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Many might think that coming out of the closet and admitting one’s gay is a lot easier to do these days than it once was, but that isn’t always the case, and the film “Love, Simon” is the perfection depiction of this ongoing struggle for so many.

“Love, Simon” stars Nick Robinson as the lead character Simon, a senior in high school who’s been living for over four years with a secret he’s way too afraid to tell anyone, that being that he’s gay. No one has any inkling about it, not his father Jack (Josh Duhamel), his mother Emily (Jennifer Garner), his sister Nora (Talitha Eliana Bateman) or even his three best friends Leah (Katherine Langford), Abby (Alexandra Shipp), or Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.). That’s solely because Simon has spent years doing what everyone else does, like going to the school dances with girls or pretending to like girls that others find attractive, especially when the only openly gay guy he knows is constantly made fun of by fellow classmates. One day though, that all begins to change when Simon discovers that another guy from his high school has placed a message out on an open chat forum under the name Blue, about his own sexuality struggles. Suddenly, Simon has a spark of hope and in a flash of courage one evening, he decides to create a private e-mail address solely to send a letter to Blue under the name Jacques. As Simon fearfully hits the send button and makes his very first step at peeking out of the closet, he awaits anxiously for days afterward for a response. When he finally gets one, his heart leaps for joy, as that internal loneliness finally seems to have a single ray of light shining into it. Soon the conversations draw deeper between Blue and Simon, leaving Simon to constantly day dream about who Blue might really be. But one day that single ray of light that’s been causing Simon to glow, gets covered up under a pile of tremendous fear when a fellow classmate, Martin (Logan Miller), accidentally reads Simon’s private emails on a library computer after Simon forgets to log out. It’s then that Simon realizes the reality of remaining anonymous is no longer possible and it may actually be the very thing that forces him to come out, much to his utter horror.

I truly loved this film and am grateful that Hollywood is finally now making mainstream movies that accurately depict the full spectrum of what’s it like to be a gay individual in this world. For the longest time, the only way a gay man seemed to be portrayed on television or in film was as an extremely flamboyant, overly promiscuous type of individual, like Jack (Sean Hayes) in Will & Grace. Yet, that’s not how every gay man is and is definitely not how I have ever seen myself as. That’s why I really connected to Simon’s coming out story, because it ultimately reminded me a lot of the one I went through between the ages of 13 and 23.

I lived for that entire decade in a closet of hell, where I seemed to keep falling for my closest guy friends over and over again. Like Simon, my true sexuality existed more in fantasy than in reality, simply because I was afraid I’d be completely rejected by the world if I ever came out. I ended up dating a number of women because of it and even had sexual experiences with a few of them along the way, just to keep up an appearance. But what was even harder to face during this period was the notion that the only type of guy I ever found myself being attracted to was heavyset. I honestly thought it was a curse at first and that God must have somehow made a mistake. It was hard enough being gay in this world but being interested in only chubby guys was even harder.

It wasn’t until I became besties in college with a stocky guy during my senior year, who I’ll label as “R”, that I began to be propelled into my own emergence from the closet. “R” was the first person I ever fell in love with and it was my intense feelings for him that caused my alcohol and drug addiction to skyrocket. I heavily drank alcohol and took many drugs to cover up my feelings for “R” until my life started to totally unravel because of it. It’s then I began to believe it was the alcohol and drugs that were actually making me feel the way I did about “R” and with guys in general, so I sought God out to find sobriety thinking it would fix my sexuality crisis. After several months of sobriety, my feelings for “R” only intensified, yet through a great therapist I discovered I wasn’t the only one in this world who had the same type of attraction as I. And once I began to meet others like me who had already emerged from the closet and were out living happy lives, I slowly began to take steps to do the same. But sadly, I received plenty of rejection along the way, from churches, to my mother, to friends, and even “R”. Thankfully though, my father was a diamond in all that rough, telling me that he would unconditionally love me no matter who I was attracted to.

Nevertheless, coming out of the closet often seems to be a very difficult thing to do, even to this day, for plenty of individuals. People still face rejection from judgmental family members, friends, and many other loved ones. Far too frequent, the Bible and other religious books keep on being thrown at gay people, claiming it’s a sin and that God abhors it, which I believe to be quite far from God’s truth. Regardless, many continue to be ostracized by their families and numerous others they care about because of this. This is why so many choose to remain married to the opposite sex, even in today’s progressive age. And if you don’t believe me, all you need to do is peruse through the countless gay sites out there, as there you’ll find them littered with countless closeted married men who are deathly afraid of emerging fully from the closet and instead opt to have anonymous sex outside their marriages.

This is precisely why I hope that many more movies will begin to emerge like “Love, Simon” or the recent Oscar darling “Call Me By Your Name”, or last year’s best picture winner “Moonlight”, as each help to break down all those fears that keep people in the closet, living out those anonymous sexual-based lives that only end up toxifying and lowering their spiritual vibration in the long run.

Nonetheless, “Love, Simon” is a beautiful coming out story for the movie ages. In the end, it truly helped me to have appreciation for what I had to go through 23 years ago, when I faced and fully embraced my own sexuality and attraction to heavyset men. If you happen to be someone who’s still living in the closet, like I once did in great fear, please know my prayers are with you. I do understand and hope that one day, movies like “Love, Simon” and stories like my own, will end up providing you enough courage to eventually create your very own coming out story…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

I like what people often refer to as “Chick Flicks”. Yes, those corny falling-in-love type of movies that tend to make one get all weepy and xpsmotional when watching them and “Forever My Girl” is one of those that I saw recently in the theater that was not only heartfelt, but also struck a few chords.

Initially taking place in a very small town in Louisiana named St. Augustine, the film begins with a young woman named Josie (Jessica Rothe) getting stood up at her own wedding by the love of her life, a man named Liam Page (Alex Roe), someone who just recently has come into musical fame in the country circuit. The film quickly moves on after that to 8 years later where Liam has gained worldwide stardom with his music. But it’s apparent he’s extremely unhappy even in light of that with all the alcohol he consumes on a daily basis. It’s also apparent Liam is living with regret and shame about leaving Josie at the altar all those years later when his ratty flip phone containing a message from Josie gets crushed under a fangirl’s foot in his hotel room. As he desperately seeks to get that phone fixed, he notices a news report covering the tragic death of his closest friend from high school, the one who was supposed to be his best man and the one who let Josie know he wasn’t going to be showing up for their wedding. Liam starts to suffer from a total mental breakdown because of all this and decides to leave his national tour in the lurch on the eve of its final performance by heading home to attend the funeral. Once there, as soon as Josie sets eyes upon him, along with the rest of the town, it’s obvious his presence is unwelcomed. But that’s all about to change once Liam discovers Josie has been holding onto a huge secret over the past 8 years.

I know the plot of this movie might sound like it belongs on some silly Hallmark channel evening special and maybe indeed it could very easily show up in some similar fashion there as well. Yet, this movie still touched me nonetheless more so than many of the other “Chick Flicks” I’ve seen, mostly because of the life Liam was living. Filled with money and fame, Liam was a guy who had totally lost his way, having grown up too fast from his sudden musical fame. Money, drugs, booze, and sex had become his way to cope with everything and boy, do I know that pattern well.

While I may have not gained any type of fame thus far in life, I did come into money quite early on, as well as drugs, booze, and sex. And because of it, I always thought I was above everyone else. And like Liam, I constantly expected everyone else to do everything for me. I really had to chuckle at one point in the film where Liam pretty much snapped his fingers and told his manager to get him an espresso. This selfishness and self-centeredness that Liam demonstrated was a great reminder to a life I once lived. Mercifully, money, drugs, booze, and sex don’t rule my life anymore. Instead, I have something far more valuable in place of it, that being an unconditionally loving heart for my friends and loved ones. To me that’s way more priceless than any of the things Liam or myself ever coveted in life.

That’s why I thoroughly enjoyed watching “Forever My Girl”, not only because it was a heartfelt “Chick Flick”, but also because of these few chords it struck within me. Each were great reminders of a life I never want to go back to. One where I was far more consumed with self, instead of what’s truly important in life, that being the unconditional love for others, something that thankfully, both Liam and I finally realized in the end.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson