Growing up, if I wasn’t in the backyard making my younger sister eat homemade mud pies {that I ‘baked’ in the mailbox}, rollerblading around the neighborhood, or dreaming up crazy ‘Double Dare’ dares I can guarantee that you’d find me 10 inches from the front of our 19 inch TV. From the moment I dropped my backpack, shoes, and lunchbox directly in front of the front door I’d be flipping back and forth between the five channels that would show ‘Saved by the Bell’ and ‘Fresh Prince of Bell Air’. I mean, I knew exactly how to do it too: between 2:30 pm and 6:27 pm Monday through Friday you could watch those two shows non-stop. You’d have 33 minutes for dinner – then you could get back in front of the boob-tube in time for prime time. {Now, rarely did my parental figures actually let this happen. But it could.}
I taught myself to ‘rap’ {If you can call a suburban 10-year-old girl with coke bottle glasses and a bowl cut a ‘rapper’} to “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” Anyway – this is a long-winded way to say I don’t remember Will Smith ever NOT being in the media during my formative years…
…then, as we all know…Oscar-Gate 2022…
My feelings around this person – that I felt like I grew up with but also didn’t know at all now – caused me a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Enter a road trip, an article about autobiographies whose audiobooks were read by their famous authors, and my library card… Believe it or not, in 2023 not a lot of people were interested in what Mr. Smith had to say and it was available for immediate checkout…
…As you can imagine his childhood wasn’t awesome, he ‘got lucky’ a few times, worked his @$$ off way more times. Rode some coattails. Dragged people along with him. Fell in love. Broke peoples’ hearts. Was self-absorbed and kept his eyes on the prize until he almost lost it all and realized what the prize really was…
What I don’t think you always think about are the decisions some people choose to make – and just as importantly, WHY they choose to make them. In the book ‘Big Willy’ talks about two of his favorite reads: The Alchemist {which we all know is mine too} and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Based on the latter book, the stories {real life, books, movies, songs, etc.} that really resonate with us and pull at our heartstrings tend to have the protagonist moving from a caterpillar to a butterfly. And, I think we’re watching Will Smith’s real-life ‘hero’s journey’ unfold in real-time. This is another one of his ‘tests’. It’s life imitating art! The philosophy he used to select his movie roles in his heyday is now appearing in his personal life.
Now, whether or not he’s a ‘hero’ is up to you – and – the hero’s journey can take so many forms. {So many in fact, that we take a deep dive into it in our Feel Your F&*#ing Experience 😉 } But, just like my reading of this autobiography, I hope you won’t just someone’s ‘book’ just by the cover. Open it up and skim a few pages…then come on back and we’ll discuss how the hero’s journey is a lot like your grief’s journey too.
