“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” ~ Sigmund Freud
I had this weird experience with an idea for a screenplay. It didn’t feel like something I thought up, more like something that was already there, waiting for me to notice it. I never actually wrote the thing, but I can still see it perfectly.
Picture this: you die—and to your surprise, you’re standing on an endless road, stretching out to infinity in both directions. The road is lined with countless movie theaters buzzing with activity. The marquees don’t advertise the latest blockbusters—they display simple names. John Smith. Maria Rodriguez. David Chen. Each one a life, a movie waiting to be watched.
You drift into one theater, curious and confused, settling into a worn velvet seat as the lights dim. What unfolds on screen is breathtaking—a sweeping biographical epic, following one person’s journey from first breath to final heartbeat. You watch their childhood dreams shatter and transform, witness love found and lost, see them battle through illness and physical limitations that would have broken lesser spirits, watch them stand up when it would be easier to stay down.
The struggles are real—emotional, physical, spiritual—the failures devastating, the triumphs earned. Bodies that refused to quit, minds that pushed through despair, hearts that kept loving despite being broken. When the credits roll, the entire audience leaps to their feet in thunderous applause, moved by the fierce humanity of a life fully lived.
Intrigued, you wander into another theater. This time, the audience is restless, checking phones, walking out mid-film. The movie is a study in mediocrity—two hours of someone sleepwalking through existence, taking no risks, standing for nothing, loving cautiously, and avoiding anything that might disturb their comfortable numbness. Every physical challenge became an excuse to quit, every emotional hurdle a reason to retreat. The few people who stayed seem to be fighting sleep.
Then your blood runs cold. There, blazing in neon letters on a marquee ahead, is your own name. Your movie. Your life. Do you walk in? Do you have the courage to sit in that dark theater and confront every choice you made, every chance you took or didn’t take, knowing you can’t change a single frame? Some people do. Others keep walking, unable to face what they suspect will be a story of what could have been rather than what was—a life lived for comfort, numbing distractions, and everyone else’s approval except their own.
This haunting image stayed with me because it reveals something we all sense but rarely acknowledge: life isn’t a carefully crafted story we write before hand. Our pre-written scripts would be predictable and safe—comforting to live but deadly boring to watch. Life is pure improv. We step into the world anew every morning with no predetermined scenes, just a collection of experiences and instincts and the courage—or lack thereof—to respond with truth to whatever we encounter.
Most of us treat life like we’re waiting for someone to hand us our lines. We follow the expected responses, the safe improvisations, the predictable reactions that won’t ruffle feathers or challenge audiences. We say “yes, and…” to conformity and comfort but “no, because…” to challenge and growth. We improvise from a place of fear instead of curiosity, sticking to familiar character types and rehearsed responses instead of exploring who we might become moment to moment.
But the most captivating lives come from people who embrace the chaos of improvisation. They don’t know what’s coming next, but they lean into it anyway. When life throws them a devastating diagnosis, a heartbreak, a financial crisis—or hands them an unexpected challenge or opportunity—they don’t freeze up or phone in a lukewarm response. They trust themselves to transform whatever emerges. They understand that our most moving moments often emerge from our most challenging ones—not by avoiding the pain, but by transforming it into something achingly transcendent.
Here’s the striking paradox: the more we accept that life is improvisation, the more intentional we can become. When you realize there’s no script to follow, you become fiercely protective of how you choose to respond. You stop waiting for permission and start trusting your finely tuned instincts. You understand that every moment you choose curiosity over certainty, truth over approval, courage over comfort, you’re improvising toward something extraordinary.
The tragedy isn’t that some lives end too soon, but that so many people spend their entire existence waiting for someone else to tell them what to do next. They die with their best improvisations unexplored, their most honest responses unspoken, their potential unrealized. Their movies end not with applause but with the audience, and themselves, wondering what might have happened if they’d just trusted themselves to wing it.
The beautiful truth is that every moment is a chance to improvise differently. You can stop waiting for the perfect setup and start responding to what’s actually in front of you. Everyday you have a choice between spontaneous and scripted, between real and rehearsed, between now and never. And the sum of those choices becomes your life.
When the final curtain falls, the real question isn’t what critics might say—it’s what you will remember, what your children will remember, what those who’ve had the privilege of being in your presence will carry with them long after you’re gone. Will they talk about how you improvised through the impossible moments, the risks you took when you didn’t know the outcome, the authentic responses that surprised even you?
But here’s what matters even more: the people who witness your courage to live fully don’t just remember it—they carry that permission into their own lives. Your willingness to embrace uncertainty becomes their invitation to do the same. Your authentic responses in difficult moments give them a template for their own truth-telling. Your creative instincts become proof that everyone has something beautiful to offer the world.
When you choose the unknown over the comfortable, you’re not just living your own truth—you’re showing everyone around you that it’s possible to live with that kind of openness and bravery. And that might be the most beautiful improvisation of all—turning your one unrepeatable life into permission for countless others to live theirs.
Stay passionate!
Yet another wonderful post that resonates and speaks a truth for ALL to hear. Bless you brother Tom.
What a great post, Asacker. Why? It resonates. It makes me think about the life I lived as a child, and then as a young adult, and the third act I’m living now.
I’m going to plagiarize (from myself) - a pinned note on my FB page along with a photo with my wife:
“Sometimes in life, the script we’ve been handed no longer fits the story we want to live. We realize the rules we were following were assigned by someone who didn’t have our best interests in mind. So we write our own story. A better story. And we ‘run the play.’”
It’s never too late to rewrite your own story.