Tag Archives: AUTHENTICITY

Oh Captain, My Captain!

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Robin Williams

It’s been a week since Robin Williams died, and I thought I’d mark the occasion by sharing the comments I posted to Facebook last Tuesday morning, with a few minor modifications. I end this post as I begin it (“Oh Captain, My Captain!”) because of all the ways that Robin touched my life (The Fisher King, Good Will Hunting), it is The Fisher King that most shaped my young mind, inspiring me to go for the life that was authentic, the life that is mine alone. Thank you, Robin, for shining so bright, and for inspiring all of us to let our own lights shine. And now my thoughts of last Tuesday, which are as true today as they were then.

“I was at a play last night by the Pulitzer nominated playwright Rajiv Joseph. Joseph and the male lead both worked with Robin Williams on Rajiv’s pulitzer nominated play, “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” with Robin in the titular role. It was an intimate performance in a very small theatre, but afterwords, the lead actor spoke on behalf of himself and Joseph about their great loss and the world’s great loss. People sprung into tears all around me. A reminder of how deeply we sometimes touch the lives of those we do not know.

In this in this year of great loss in the Hollywood community (Philip Seymour Hoffman and now Robin Williams), I just want to say that we owe a great great debt to those who open themselves fully, who feel so very very deeply for the rest of us (who, like the scapegoats of yore, agree to carry the wounds of the tribe).

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Authenticity & The Tale Of
Two Fathers And Sons

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Last Sunday’s New York Times Style section featured a story on Jesse Jackson, Jr., who’s been struggling with bi-polar disorder and recently resigned from his post as U.S. Congressman. It was a moving story, but what jumped out at me was not the pain of having an organic illness that sidelines a career. What jumped out at me was the tragedy of being born into a family that had nothing but the best intentions for you, but that somehow (unwittingly) got it so wrong.

“I grew up in a house with great expectations,” the younger Mr. Jackson told The Chicago Tribune in 1995, months before he first ran for Congress. “Everything I do has a mark of excellence on it.”

“If I want to be a lawyer, that’s not enough,” added Mr. Jackson, who has a law degree and a master’s in theology. “I need to be a Supreme Court justice one day. If I wanted to be an elected official, that’s not enough. ‘One day, son, you may be president.’ ”

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Billy Reid’s Shindig

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Billy Reid: Southern Hospitality on Nowness.com.

The life of Florence, Alabama-based womenswear and menswear designer Billy Reid is so insanely beautiful, authentic and inspired it’ll have you wanting to decamp to some sleepy town in the Deep South…if only to prove that it isn’t so sleepy after all. Florence Alabama alone, which the New York Times dubbed the fashion capital of the deep South (never mind that moniker only shows up in the Google search, and never in the article itself). Florence alone is home to Billy Reid and filmmaker turned designer Natalie Chanin’s Project Alabama, (since re-dubbed Alabama Chanin), the fashion house that found its place in the fashion firmament by combining high fashion with a community revitalization project that employs local women ages 20 to 70, former factory workers, retired teachers, widows, stay-at-home moms, and secretaries who help sew Alabama Chanin’s one-of-a-kind, handmade garments. Alabama Music Hall of Fame is just down the highway, and if you stop on in, you’ll learn a thing or two about Alabama native son Hank Williams and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which influenced the sounds of Aretha Franklin and so many more. You’ll even find a Frank Lloyd Wright house right there in Florence, the only one of its kind open to the public in the deep South.

But I digress. There’s a whole world of riches in the Deep South — and just about any place if you look with an open mind. But this is about Billy Reid. Billy’s life is a living example of what a fully realized life can look like — and a reminder that sometimes our best life can only be accessed by riding the stormy waves that life sometimes brings until it carries us to some new shore. Billy rode his wave to Florence, Alabama, where he hosts his annual Shindig each year. One of these days, Billy Reid is going to invite me to his Shindig. Until then, I’ve got this video from Nowness.com, one of the most inspired destinations on the Web.

3 REASONS TO LOVE BILLY REID:

One. Because, when his business failed on the heels of an economy turned south, Reid and family packed up and moved his family to that deeper, sweeter South.

Two. Because Reid created a new reality — and invited us all along.

Three. Because, in rebuilding his business, Reid rose like a Phoenix from the ash.

VIDEO BY Nowness.com

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September 2012:
Why We Revel

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Former nun Karen Armstrong tells us in her luminous book The Spiral Staircase that the wasteland in the Grail Legend is a place “where people live inauthentic lives, blindly following the norms of their society and doing only what other people expect.” How many of us have lived our lives in the wasteland, never daring to step toward the life we dream? Or having taken that first bold step, how many of us turn back, when things get hard, or it seems we’ve lost our way?

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Revel Wisdom:
Find Out Who You Are

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At the end of the day, what we all really want is to live the life we came here for, the life that reflects who we really are under the layers of fear that keep us bound to the gods of external validation long after we’ve lost our faith. Losing your faith can be as simple as learning that the longed-for thing did not bring the satisfaction we sought. Consider the words from Tom Brady, speaking on 60 Minutes with 3 Super Bowl rings to his name. He said, “there has to be more than this.”

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