I read Eat, Pray, Love when I was pregnant with Connor and wasn’t a huge fan. I liked the book well enough – interesting story – but I thought Liz Gilbert was a narcissistic drama queen who just needed to get it together already.
That descent into judgmental karma-land certainly came back to bite me, didn’t it?
I didn’t get it then. I didn’t understand what depression was like, what it does to people. I didn’t cut her any slack for feeling as though she was screaming on the inside and no one could hear. I didn’t get it when she admitted to feeling like she was living the wrong life.
A while back my husband casually mentioned that the movie was available through our on-demand service but, since I didn’t particularly like the book – and really didn’t want to see Julia Roberts playing Julia Roberts, er, Liz Gilbert – I didn’t watch it. Then Connor got sick and I spent a lot of time on the couch. When I got sick of Big Bang Theory re-runs, I decided to give the movie a shot.
The movie as a whole was better than I expected, but it wasn’t until the end – the very, very end when Gilbert describes her philosophy about truth seeking – that I got it.
“If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself….then truth will not be withheld from you. Or so I’ve come to believe.”
I had read these words when I read the book, but in that moment I heard them for the first time.
My philosophy – though never this eloquently stated – is the same. I’ve never been good at trusting my instincts for the small stuff. But the big stuff, no sweat.
Truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue? Absolutely. Except I call them signs. And they’ve been coming at me for a while, some of which I wrote about in an earlier inspiration post.
I haven’t watch Oprah for years, but I did watch her final show and there it was again.
“We all are called. Everybody has a calling. And your real job in life is to figure out what that is and get about the business of doing it.”
I have a career that I love and that I feel is important. But I’ve realized it’s not the same thing as my calling.
“That is what a calling is: it lights you up and it lets you know that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.”
That’s what sharing my story has done for me. And what hearing others’ stories has done. Something that I refused to acknowledge for a long time has become what lights me up.
“Every day in every way you are showing people exactly who you are. You’re letting your life speak for you.”
That’s what this blog has become for me. From the first day, I’ve written what I’m feeling, no matter how raw or honest or scary. This is who I am.
“Wherever you are, that is your platform. And that is where your power lies… Connect, embrace, liberate, love somebody. Just one person. And then spread that to two and as many as you can. You’ll see the difference it makes.”
This is my platform. For now. And maybe it will stay that way. But it’s already done what I didn’t know it could do. Liberate someone. What a powerful way to express what helping to free someone from their own struggle can feel like.
Oprah talked about your life speaking to you as a whisper that, if you don’t listen, will start to throw bricks. And if you don’t listen, she said, the whole brick wall will fall down.
Well, my brick wall fell down. So I’m listening. Every day I’m piecing together more and more about what I want to do with this opportunity. I don’t know where it will take me. I don’t know if it will be something I do an hour a day after work or if it will be more than that.
“You have the power to change somebody’s life,” Oprah said.
I’ve already seen the difference it makes, so I intend to keep shining my light.
