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Think of an iconic movie that helped define your generation, but you are among the few of your friends who have never seen it.

Scrolling through movies to stream, my wife, Jennifer, was aghast that I, a proud member of Generation X, had never seen Reality Bites.

The 1994 film follows recent college graduates searching for meaning as they navigate careers, relationships, and early adulthood. With a cast that included Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, and Ben Stiller, I felt like I needed to turn in my Gen X card that night.

Jennifer offered a disclaimer before we started our movie.

“Now, I haven't seen the movie in several years, so I don't know if it will hold up over time,” she said with a laugh. “But I do know it has an incredible soundtrack that still stands strong.”

I reassured Jennifer it would be great, pressed “Play,” and an hour and 39 minutes later, I felt I could confidently reclaim my Gen X card. Reality Bites had everything I expected from an early-1990s movie, and I even told Jennifer I’d be open to watching it again someday.

But what really captured my attention was the music that accompanied the scenes and dialogue. The soundtrack was just as memorable as the story, with perfectly placed songs such as U2’s All I Want Is You, The Knack’s My Sharona, The Posies’ Going, Going, Gone, and Lisa Loeb’s Stay.

Music does so much more than fill the silence in movies. It helps tell the story, deepens emotion, signals change, and gives meaning to moments in ways dialogue alone sometimes cannot.

As the credits rolled, I found myself wondering what the soundtrack would sound like if I scored a movie about my life with multiple sclerosis and what songs might appear in yours.

Seeing your story from the outside

After living with MS for more than 26 years, I’ve learned that finding new ways to understand your story can be unexpectedly cathartic. Imagining my life as a film and assigning music to the moments that have shaped me helps me step outside the daily realities of MS and see the bigger picture. 

From that perspective, my story feels different. Stepping outside myself, I see more than the disease's challenges. I see the main character's resilience, growth, partnership, and persistence. 

Plus, watching the story from a distance makes it easier to cheer for the main character and to keep hoping for the next meaningful scene still to come. And like any meaningful film, my life with MS needs a great soundtrack.

Certain scenes immediately came to mind as I thought about the moments that have shaped my MS journey, not because music changes the reality of those experiences, but because it helps me process them and remember how far the story has come.

Let’s put together the stories, music, and soundtracks of our lives with MS.

I have always felt the movie Purple Rain, featuring Prince, has a perfect soundtrack of nine songs, so I used this as my foundation for defining nine key (dare I say universal) moments nearly everybody encounters when living with MS — moments that would be shared in a movie about this disease.

These are the moments, and I have included the tracks that would accompany them in my MS movie soundtrack. I didn’t want to be too specific in describing these moments so you could interpret them through your own experiences.

And as you develop this, don’t limit yourself to nine songs. You could make this an entire setlist of songs that help you define, remember, and move forward with this disease.

My MS movie soundtrack: 
1. Life before MS – Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits
2. When unknown early symptoms set in – Zombie by The Cranberries
3. Initial doctor visits and testing – Dazed and Confused by Led Zeppelin
4. Diagnosis day – Plowed by Sponge
5. Treatment and coming to terms with MS – Give Me Novacaine by Green Day
6. Celebrating wins/grieving losses – Heard the World by O.A.R.
7. Moving forward – Imitation of Life by R.E.M.
8. Embracing joy – Odds Are by Barenaked Ladies
9.Closing credits and looking ahead — Tomorrow Never Knows by Bruce Springsteen

Maybe our lives with MS don’t follow the script we expected. Maybe the scenes unfold differently than we imagined. But the story is still being written. Like any meaningful film, our soundtracks continue to evolve.

So if you ever find yourself wondering how to make sense of your journey with MS, try scoring it like a movie. You might discover that the main character is stronger than you realized and the music is still playing.