Truman Show

If you haven’t seen this film, I will explain. I’m no Claudia Winkleman but please bear with me. Hollywood created the ultimate soap opera. The difference is that one of the characters in the film, Truman, played by Jim Carrey, has no idea that his whole life is being watched by the rest of the world, twenty-four hours a day. They call it The Truman Show. There are cameras in his house, his car, in fact everywhere he goes. Nothing is real in his world, not even the sea or the sky. All his family members are actors, including his wife. His workplace and home are just part of the biggest film set ever created . It is the ultimate voyeur’s dream, a twenty-four hour live ‘fly on the wall’ insight into someone’s life. It is the most watched television programme of all time and the makers are keen to keep it going for as long as possible. They are making millions out of controlling his existence and, if they manage to keep the illusion going until he dies, he will be none the wiser. Just like a real soap opera, there are scriptwriters planning what should happen next. Truman himself believes that the world he inhabits is real and every decision he makes is of his own choice and doing. Why shouldn’t he? He has no idea that his life is being controlled and his very destiny is in the hands of a scriptwriter.

However, the makers of The Truman Show didn’t take into account one eventuality. He wants to explore the world. The show is thirty years old and so is Truman.

There is a part of him that knows there is more to life than this and he wants to expand his horizons. This is a major problem as there is nowhere to travel and he lives in a world within a world but has no idea of this. The sea only goes so far and eventually hits the edge of the film set but how is Truman to know? The makers of the show do everything in their power to stop him even to the extent that Truman’s father was killed in a fishing accident when he was a boy causing Truman to blame himself and be afraid of water ever since. In fact, his father was, like everybody else, just an actor who is really alive and well. The creator of The Truman Show had to think of something to stop him travelling so killing off his father this way seemed like a good plot device.

The next option for Truman was plane travel. However, when he went to the travel agents there were pictures of planes crashing to deter him. His actress wife is constantly telling him not to go travelling but to start a family. To cut a long story short, several events happen to make him sense that something is not quite all it seems in his world. He finally decides to cross the sea by boat, as there is just no other alternative. The director panics and creates a storm (literally) where Truman nearly dies. They cannot let him leave or let him die on live television. In the end his boat ends up hitting the sky which, after all, is just a large piece of heavy canvas. At this moment his perception begins to change. He climbs out of the boat and puts his hand on the sky. He then finds some stairs leading to a door in the middle

of the sky. He opens it and realises he has discovered a whole new world he never knew existed. However, there is still fear.

Truman had only known his world and did not know what was out there. The illusions had been removed but there was a voice telling him that there was nothing out there that was not already here. The voice was that of the creator of the show making one last attempt to save his precious programme. Although Truman felt a little fearful, what was his alternative? Stay in a world where everything is false for the rest of his life? What kind of life is that? There really was no decision to make so he thought for a second and then, in a truly confident manner, he voiced his catchphrase, ‘Farewell and if I don’t see ya again, good afternoon, good evening and goooodnight!’

His life and destiny changed at that point and he became his own scriptwriter. For thirty long years everything he had believed was false. Just because he had firmly believed it to be real, did not make it so. Everyone on the outside knew it was all false but to one person in this artificial world it appeared very real. When the creator of the show is asked in an interview afterwards why he thought it took Truman so long to realise what was really happening, he replies, ‘We accept the world with which we are presented.’ How true is that?

For many years I firmly believed that everything alcohol appeared to do was real. I thought that it was all true. However, I was simply deceived but I was not the

only one. I was accepting a world which I was being presented . In the film, Truman was the only person who was being deceived and controlled. He was just one person who was suffering from a delusion. When it comes to alcohol, there are millions being deluded around the world. I realised when I escaped that there is a whole new world out there. If you were Truman (let’s say that you were not the only one being fooled but your whole family was being deluded), would you just watch from the outside once you discovered this whole new world, or would you do everything in your power to make everyone see that they also could be set free? You would want to do everything in your power to help them realise that they were deluded and trapped, wouldn’t you? That is exactly how I feel. I can see it so clearly now and this book is about helping you to see something that is obvious when you look beyond the accepted perception.

The good news is that when you stop drinking you begin to write your own script and control who you are. You do not have to go through a storm of any kind, contrary to the brainwashing. There is a door in the sky that releases you to a whole new world and the key is in your own head; you are the master of your own show. The only thing that is stopping you is fear. I could have escaped years before but fear stopped me. In fact it was the false perception created by the alcohol itself and the conditioning since birth.

Another way to see beyond the false perception is mentally to step outside the cage for a minute and ask the question …