Angel and Tiggs

… who would I be? Where would I live? What would I do? Thinking about a different life is a fun exercise.  Instead of looking at movie stars’ personal lives, I’d much rather concentrate my thoughts on the characters they play. Let’s get started. And remember “all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

Personality:  This would be a very wild mix between Daniel Craig’s James Bond, Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne, Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas, Leonard Nimoy’s Spock in Star Trek, David Schwimmer’s Ross Geller in Friends (forgive the TV reference here) and Star Wars’ Jedi Master Yoda. How do they connect? Well, I’ve always been fond of characters involved in mystery and internal emotional turmoil. It also would be great if my personality allowed me to talk as little as possible and be a master in everything a human being can possibly do (like the tricks Bourne and Bond operate). But being Bond or Bourne, reporting to other people and receiving orders without questioning are not exactly a picture perfect scenario for me. I’d like to be in a commanding position like the fearless Spartan leader. He was respected, a great decision make who knew exactly what he wanted to die for. And people would follow him. The capacity to lead and be heard is what I like about Yoda. He’s a Master who solves everything with a sentence, usually in reverse order, but he’s also a fighter. Perfect combination of anima sana in corpore sano (or “healthy mind in a healthy body” if you’re not familiar with the expression). He also personifies that wisdom and knowledge come with time and a lot of effort. He didn’t achieve that rank by chance or accident. In fact, George Lucas should go back in time and tell Yoda’s story in a whole new trilogy. Similar to Yoda is Spock. He is the master of wisdom, shaped to be the most knowledgeable being out there. But most of all, what attracts me to Spock is his ability to control feelings and show no expression. He goes way beyond the poker face term. Even better, his entire Vulcan culture is based on science and knowledge, and not passion and emotion. Wouldn’t that be great? From Ross Geller I only wanted his PhD title. From all the traits and tasks above mentioned, that might actually be the easiest one to achieve during my lifetime.

Origins: Personality explained and based on my own self-knowledge journeys, I’m sure I would have been born in Germany or Japan. If I had to tell a story about my origins, this is what it would be: my father was a Swiss university professor (like Michael Fassbender’s Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method) living in Munich at the time of the Black September attack against the Israeli delegation. He’s so disgusted about the act that he decides to “defect” and move to East Berlin, where he meets my mother, an anarchist disguised as a KGB agent operating in the DDR. They meet, nine months later I come to this world only to realize that my father turned to the dark side of the force and got arrested by the CIA. He’s never seen again. My mother decides to cool her jets and change her way of life, but KGB doesn’t accept it, so she runs away to Canada and raise me in Halifax.

Time: If my life was a movie, growing up in the 1940’s or 1950’s would be my ideal scenario.

Place: I would definitely live somewhere in Europe, definitely, but with lots of traveling involved. Anywhere in Germany (Berlin, like the characters from Goodbye, Lenin or What to do in case of Fire), Denmark, Sweden or northern England like Billy Elliott.

Occupation: a spy like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, a soldier who dies for his country like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, a grumpy veteran like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino or any other sort of really critical occupation like Meghan in Bridesmaids (she takes care of the nuke codes).

I better get back to reality now…