Tonight's discussion revolved largely around drama, and the ways in which drama takes situations that are in fact not very important and expands them into circumstances that seem extremely urgent when they are in fact are neither urgent nor important. Someone said that his inner drama about thinking that he failed in life made a not-so-good situation virtually unbearable.
Someone else said that she often found herself getting sucked by others into their drama -- "Ellen is going to commit suicide, what should we do???" -- and getting insomnia about the problem, and then the next day calling their friend and finding out that Ellen (not her real name) was fine and had gone out to a party. In other words, because she had taken the ball and was running with it, the friends who created the drama about Ellen let go of it and were sleeping soundly while she was staying up all night worrying. So she decided to think of herself as sitting in the bleachers and watching the drama unfold in front of her, and when anybody offers her a ball of drama and asks her to run with it, she simply tells them that she's in the bleachers now and that she'd be glad to offer them some popcorn, but that she doesn't run with that ball any more.
(This video was reviewed by Bob McGarey)
Feel free to come and share your own personal insights sometime; the Saturday Night Video and Discussions here in Austin, Texas are a lot of fun and fascinating. (They're free, too.) Here are the questions the group came up with, based on the personal growth themes in the movie: