It wasn’t an
epiphany. It wasn’t even the first time I had heard of it, or the first time I thought
of it, but it was nice to see it in action.
I was in a coin
shop where I casually told the clerk my husband had been in a few days earlier
to purchase a tiny square of gold to electroplate a bug. She laughed, “Why?”
“To take its
picture with an electron microscope.”
She loved microscopy she said. She used the imagery in her potting, and
she showed me a coffee mug of her own design. Pure pleasure showed on her face, excitement
in her voice. People love talking about what they love.
Next at the
bank the teller sported a beautiful vintage engagement ring. Her face lighted when I asked her when she was getting
married. “Soon,” she said. Her fiance’ was raised in Hawaii, he was flying his
family to Eugene. He was Samoan, and he was taking her to Samoa so she could
see his culture, and how he was raised. She was in for an adventure, and excitement
reigned supreme.
Remember the
movie You Can’t Take it With You (1938
Oscar winner for Best picture) where the patriarch, the Grandfather played by
Lionel Barrymore collected an odd assortment of dreamers, misfits, eccentrics,
and they lived together in his house where they did pretty much whatever they
wanted. Someone had left behind a typewriter, and Barrymore’s daughter, and mother of the Jean Arthur
character engaged to Jimmy Stewart, picked it up and began writing a
screenplay. She had written herself into a monastery and couldn’t find a way
out. All through the movie she asked whoever showed up to help her get out of
the monetary. That’s a stock phrase at
our house. “How can I get out of the
monastery?”
Once the Barrymore
character was doing business with a lack-luster accountant. He asked the man
what he really wanted to do. From beneath his desk the man pulled out a bunny,
a mechanical toy he had made. His face lighted. This is what he wanted to do,
make mechanical toys.
Of course Grandfather
convinced the accountant to come live at their house where other husbands and
grandfathers made fireworks in the basement.
I look
around and see few people loving what they are doing. So much of life is doing
the 9 to 5.
So, what’s
the secret?
How do we
break out, and live the life we dreamed of when we were kids, when we thought
the world had our best interests at heart and believed the world was our oyster?
(Whatever that means.)
You know the
story of the oyster who like a cookie under his sheet, finds a grain of sand in
his shell. Without hands to pull it out, he begins to coat it with a smooth
shiny substance, coating it and coating it so it no longer pokes him when he
tries to sleep. Thus the pearl is born.
I think
there are two lessons here. Take your pick.