Greenlights
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I have to tell you about the audiobook I’m listening to. It’s called Greenlights and it’s written AND read by Matthew McConaughey. Yes, Magic Mike’s Matthew McConaughey. THAT Matthew McConaughey.
I started his audiobook almost a year ago and to be completely honest with you (sorry Matthew), I didn’t like the way he read the introductory material in such a sing-songy voice. So I quit listening.
Recently, though, I ran out of audiobooks and that being the only one in my library I didn’t have to pay for and I hadn’t already listened to, I started it over.
This time, I wasn’t bothered as much by the way he read the introductory material. Then I got into some of his stories, and I actually rewound it so that my husband could listen too.
He’s a great storyteller and his world is so different from my own that it’s highly entertaining.
In one section, he talks about his first big movie. It was A Time to Kill, a book by John Grisham. He remembers that on the Friday the movie was coming out, he walked down the street to get a sandwich at his favorite shop. There were 400 other people on the street, and four of them noticed him - three girls who thought he was cute and one guy who liked his shoes. The other 396 didn’t pay any attention to him.
A Time to Kill came out that night and grossed millions at the box office. On Monday, he was headed again down the same street to get his favorite sandwich, and once again, there were about 400 people on the street. This time, 396 of them recognized him and four didn’t. Fame happened that quickly.
But the real point…
He goes on to talk about how right after that, he couldn’t tell what was real anymore. He felt like he was floating around aimlessly and he couldn’t find a way to get back to what he knew was his “truth.”
I don’t want to ruin the book for you, but he did a few different things to find his way back to himself. The things he says in the book about getting back to reality hit me in a big way.
He says (not exactly like this, but pretty close):
The truth found me. Why? Because I put myself in a place to be found. I put myself in a place to receive it. I believe the truth is all around us, all the time, but we don’t always see it. The anonymous angels, the answers. We don’t grasp it because we’re not in the right place to. We have to make a plan.
Next, he says this prayer:
God, when I come across the truth, give me the awareness to receive it, the consciousness to recognize it, the presence to personalize it, the patience to preserve it, and the courage to live it.
What does that sound like?
Wow! He’s talking about the authentic self. The truth is what you are meant to be in this world. Sometimes we don’t recognize it right away, but we’re also probably not looking for it.
He continues talking about how to find your truth. He suggests that we have to get free of the noise of this world, and says this will look different for every single person.
I’d offer that you could get free of the noise by putting down your phone and walking away. Or you could be free of the noise by praying to whomever it is you pray to. Or getting outside in nature. Or even by meditating - something that’s been tapping me on the shoulder a lot lately.
He says the truth will need no introduction. We must take that truth into the screaming arena that is our lives.
I used to teach my high school kids about the excerpt from president Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 speech in which he talks about “The Man in the Arena,” except I always called it “The Woman in the Arena,” because I could identify with it and I wanted the girls to have a bit of a push to go be who they were called to be.
I encourage you to look up that part of the speech. A section of it says, “Who strives valiantly, who spends herself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if she fails, at least fails daring greatly so that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
THAT’s how we should be living!
My wish and hope for you today and every day is that your life isn’t one of mediocrity, but one where you’re either failing or succeeding greatly.