For the last couple of years, I found myself becoming interested in a certain actor. I became entranced in his personality that exuded through every character he played. It was a sense of confidence and magical perplexity that was attracting and magnetic. I accepted the idea that he is an actor that only exists in the corner of my mind, and will never come into fruition.
It wasn’t until recently that I met someone who I found to resemble my favorite actor in the strangest ways (mainly through their looks). I thought to myself that finally I would come close to being with someone so close to my dream guy. The difficult part of the whole situation was that I met someone who lives 3 hours away from me.
Assuming that this was either a cosmic coincidence or some sort of serendipity, I pledged to myself that this was worth my time to give it a shot. Luckily, I live in an age of technology that allowed me to exchange numbers in a matter of seconds, and the journey of my actor look-a-like would begin. Until I was able to see him again, technology was my only connection to this person. Several mediums of technology were utilized. The first one was text messaging. The second was social network. The final one was odd, but strangely satisfying. I would watch movies that involved the actor that my guy looked like. As weird as it would sound, I felt like I was seeing him in action, and he was connecting to me through the medium of film.
A majority of the films I watched were from the late 80’s, and it brought up the thought that if this relationship had emerged during that decade, there would be a slim chance that anything would have progressed as it currently is. There weren’t cell phones for convenient daily communication anytime, anywhere. There was no social networks available to look up pictures and information about someone. And there surely wasn’t an easy way to look up and instantly watch film after film in the privacy of your own room. Our generation has found unique ways to keep the spirit of long distance relationships alive, and it’s hard to imagine what types of technology will emerge in the future that will add more ease to long distance communication.