Truman Burbank

"This is big! Somebody's filming me 24/7 and my life is being shown in a reality TV show!"

Crazy. A friend told me about Truman Syndrome. It's a psychological disorder where a patient thinks that his life is being played in reality TV.

CNN once reported about a man showing up at a federal building, asking for release from the reality show he was sure was being made of his life. Another patient believed that everything -- the news, his psychiatrists, the drugs they prescribed -- was part of a phony, stage-set world with him as the involuntary star. Yeah, like Jim Carrey's film, The Truman Show.

The syndrome's manifestations are extremes. Few patients take pride in their imagined celebrity, while many are deeply upset at the invasion of their privacy. A postman was profiled in the British Journal of Psychiatry who thought that "he was the eponymous hero in a film". Another patient planned to commit suicide if he couldn't leave his supposed reality show. What is alarming about this syndrome is that it involves not just the patient's circle of influence but the society at large.

This is pop culture has gone out of proportions. Today is a generation of actors. There's YouTube, personal advertisement through social network sites like Facebook, online photo albums (oops, author guilty as charged) and diaries that are open to the public, Big Brother, the list goes on. Everyone wants to be noticed. I can hear Pussy Cat Doll's "when I grow up, I wanna be a star, I wanna be famous..."

Made me think, it'sactually true that our lives are indeed being "filmed". There is not a minute in our lives that God didn't see. We actually have a 24/7 viewer who doesn't only watch us but who also knows what we think and what we feel. It's said in 2 Corinthians 5:10 that everyone will soon appear before the judgment seat Christ where we will receive what is due for all the things we did.

God knows everything. More than the people around us, it should be Him that we should please. He deserves it because He is our God and it is but proper to show our gratefulness to Him whose love for us is so great and unfathomable.