Seven months ago I found on a website an amazing article, it was called « Losing Our Identity » and written by Nicole EDDY. I immediately search more information about this South African blogger. I’ve contact her thanks to her e-mail adresse and established a real relationship with her. She was so kind and accepted to let me use her article and adapt it into a movie for my exam. The movie project began. This movie deal with new technologies and how they consume our daily basis. This subject touch me deeply and there was no U turn. I was obliged to realize it. First, the step of translation and real adaptation was important. Here is the original article :

«  When was the last time that you woke up and said ‘Wow, it’s good to be me’? How many times today have you looked at an Instagram picture, a Tumblr post, a Facebook or a tweet and thought, ‘Damn son, if only I could be her, if only I had his money, her looks, his muscles, her body, his life.’? I do it. I do it almost everyday. As a generation who have witnessed first-hand the rapid transformation of technology changing our lives on a daily basis, remembering the excitement of creating a Facebook account after it had just been launched and checking every day after school of which of my friends had posted on my wall despite the fact that I had just seen them, to witnessing social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram being introduced for the first time and watching how they quickly consumed our lives, became an important aspect for businesses and were soon incorporated into our hourly schedules. Checking our phones and news feed every hour for more updates and refreshing pages for more perfect pictures that often results in severe FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), we are so quick to wish ourselves out of our own shoes and jump straight into someones else’s.

Social media is a great and scary thing. It is a place where businesses thrive and have the power of connecting people from the furthest ends of the world. It is a way of uniting people together who once had nothing in common, it allows us to perve over our heroes, celebrities, sportsmen and women. The down side is that social media often leads to a loss of identity. We lose our uniqueness to try and fit the ‘perfect’ mould when actually, a ‘perfect’ mould does and has never existed. We, us, society have created these standards of beauty, making it acceptable for 13 year old’s to think that they should find love before the age of 20 or else face dying alone with their dog Alfie.

The sad part, is that this has all taken place before I have even got out of bed in the morning or looked outside to check if the world has not been destroyed. This is how I, and I’m sure the vast majority of you reading this, wake up. Open eyes, check phone, start day.

This morning was different and here is why. I got up before the sun rose as I couldn’t sleep due to excitement of a new travel. We pack our bags, check the house and leave. We drove straight to the airport, pass security, flew away, flew to a new place, a new culture. I got up went through to the loung, sat and drunk coffee with my dad. I sat with my coffee in hand, and just watched and listened how Istanbul began to come back to life.

And with that, I completely forgot about my phone, my social life, social media or who did what while I was asleep. I ran down to the shopping street, open eyes check around me, start an amazing day. I was so content with just being me. There was no-one else that I would rather be, nowhere else that I would rather be and no-one else that I would have been with.

I guess my message is that we are so quick to judge ourselves and those around us. People don’t get lucky, they create their own ‘lucky’ circumstances through hard work, sheer determination and real life sweat. Instead of  wishing that you could become your idol in a the click of a finger, rather look up to them, be inspired and learn from them, but don’t become them. That’s boring. Rather put your phone down or laptop off and go and create your own luck. Or at least, for the love of Zeus, take time out of your day to find a little contentment and snatch a special moment, put it in your pocket and thrive off of it until you notice the next one.

WHY are you still reading this?? Turn it off. Turn it all off. Be free. !

(let me know what you think of it in the comments !)

I’ve waited a year so far to let this information to be official. Here is the final edit of this adaptation :

[youtube width= »720″ height= »480″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGGAIg28GgQ[/youtube]