Enlightened

I have recently found myself caught up in a new-ish HBO show called Enlightened, starring Laura Dern. I turned it on one evening while waiting for something else to come on, and it sucked me in. The jist is, Dern's character, Amy, is an upper level executive at a health and beauty corporation who has a workplace meltdown and takes a sabbatical in Hawaii, returning as half of my Facebook friends; laid back, "spiritual", natural and looking to change the world with love, peace, kindness and activism. You can see why this may not entertain me.

The truth is, I find myself rooting for this character who is 40, lives with her aloof, disapproving mother and is viewed as a loser among her peers. They talk a good game to her face, all the while laughing behind her back about what a screw up she is and how pathetic her new spirit is. These are things I am often convincing myself my friends are doing. Online friends, real life friends, and of course, my "friends". Sometimes it's absolutely true, but most often I am just being paranoid. Amy, however, has no clue most of the time. And when she does get her senses tingling that someone may not be genuine, she quickly second guesses herself and decides to think the best of that person. This is something I don't do often enough. Or maybe too often. Who knows?

There are some lines of  narrative dialogue in a recent episode that I had to rewind and listen to a few times. I just thought I would share them, I wish I had written them. They play in my head numerous times a day, have for years.

"Are we connected? What do you say about me? Was I mean to you? Were you to me? What do you think of me, deep down? Am I ridiculous, or sweet, or decent?


Are we friends? Do you care?


Let it go, let it go.


Let it go."

I am fully aware that I need to get over myself. Keeping it all about me is not the way to feel better, I know this. Amy seems to know it, too. She reminds herself what she learns in yoga (of course!) class - 'Let it go'. I just wanted to share some simply written and deeply profound (at least to me) dialogue.