Sunday, July 1, 2018
Have you ever watched a movie more than once? What happens the second time around? You realize that there's more to it then the first time you saw it.
I did something that I've never done before. I watched a seven season TV series for a second time, and in case you were wondering, the series was Mad Men. In the second viewing the usual happened and I noticed things I didn't notice before. For instance, there's a scene where Don Draper's (main character) family has a nice picnic in the park on a beautiful day and then casually leaves all their trash behind. The series is a time piece set primarily in the 60's, so littering wasn't really a big deal. I find it neat that I can watch something that is exactly the same and discover new things about it, but it should come as no surprise. The more familiar we are with something, the more we can focus on the details.
I'm not afraid to admit that I googled why people watch a movie more than once. If I'm going to talk about something, I like to know what someone else said about it. It's pretty neat reading about people describing why they watched a particular movie more than once. One idea that stuck to me was that we are constantly evolving in our life experience. For the most part, we are experiencing new things every day, every week, or at the very least every month. This will change how we view the world and it will change the way we view the same movie. Depending on what our recent experiences are, we'll see the movie differently or take notice of a specific subplot more intently. I watched Mad Men when I was single, and I recently watched it again as a married man and father. I understood parts of the series on another level and understood parts of the series that I had no understanding of, like the feeling of becoming a father.
The reason I mention this is, because I believe watching movies multiple times correlates to solving complex problems. Complex problems are looked at multiple times until they become familiar. Once the general idea of the problem becomes familiar, we can start understanding the details of the problem that make it complex. Our life experiences and knowledge of how other problems have been solved can help us see the problem in different ways. This is why new experiences are so valuable and why learning about new ideas can help us solve problems better, in work and in life. A growing combination of experience and knowledge help us view the world and it's problems in different ways and that leads to a better solution. If you have the opportunity to experience something new today, I encourage you to do exactly that.