Day 16 – Thoughts from things I’m reading!
As a number of my previous posts has reflected, this period of time in history is full of difficulty for a lot of human beings. Through these reflections you may feel less alone knowing you are not being singled out. If we keep this in mind, and continue to trust that we are loved even when things are hard, it helps us bear the difficult time with grace.
There are extreme energy changes pulsing through the universe at every level and, of course, we are all part of the growing process and the growing pains. It helps if we remember that life is one phase after another and that this difficult time will inevitably give way to something new and different. Change can be a beautiful thing yet met with resistance. This too shall pass.
At the same time, if you truly feel that nothing is going right for you, it’s never a bad idea to examine your life and see if there are some changes you can make to alleviate some of the difficulty. Gently and compassionately exploring the areas giving you the most trouble may reveal things you are holding onto and need to release: unprocessed emotions, unresolved transitions, or negative ways of looking at yourself or reality. As you take responsibility for the things you can change, you can more easily surrender to the things you can’t, remembering all the while that this phase will, without doubt, give way to another. My book “Living and Dying” is a great example of how this process can work.
If you’ve been following Jim Carrey at all, you would have noticed some significant change in him personally. From some interesting notes on the documentary Jim and Andy, documentarian Chris Smith opens the full-length doc posing a question to its star, “So, Jim. How would you start this movie? The now fully-bearded Carrey with an air of calm and serenity more often attributed to Buddhist monks, ponders his reply and aptly turns the question on its head: “Well, if I had my choice, it wouldn’t start at all,” he says into camera. “It would already have been. And it wouldn’t end either,” ending the latter with a grin. “You know?”
The Netflix-VICE Documentary Films production focuses more on Carrey’s portrayal of Andy Kaufman—both on and off camera — during filming of the 1999 Miloš Forman-helmed Man on the Moon. Though fans can catch moments of the actor speaking truthfully to his own life, fame and trajectory.
“Jim Carrey is a great character and I was lucky to get the part.” — Jim Carrey, on Jimmy Kimmel Live! (2017)
“But I don’t think of that as me anymore.”
A fresh-faced Jim from a 1983 interview eerily reveals a peek into his future. Speaking about the possibility of becoming so famous he’d not be able to walk down the street, the wide-eyed up-and-comer smiles, puts on a goofy voice and says, “Won’t that be fun?” then pulls a face as he laughs. “Where it’ll be impossible to walk anywhere without being recognized.” He then pauses and looks down in subtle reflection.
It’s juxtaposed with a cut to the documentary’s current interview with a now-pensive Carrey where he breaks down the fame game (in regards to Andy playing Latka on Taxi, but also speaking to acting in general): “At some point, when you create yourself to make it, you’re going to have to either let that creation go, and take a chance on being loved or hated for who you really are, or you’re gonna have to kill who you really are…” [a pause as he looks straight into camera] “…and fall into your grave grasping onto a character that you never were.”
Later in the film, he returns to this character vs. real person theme, “I think sometimes people that exist so completely in their character, and maybe not know how to get out of it, or how to take another road, might take the ultimate road, you know? Where they, uh… they have to actually leave the, uh… the planet. You know, to get out.”
Smith gets some sense of closure from his documentary subject, when asking how playing Kaufman changed him and where he feels he stands today. Carrey responds with a glimmer of enlightened hope, “I truly feel like if you ask me where I live right now, where the real me is, I would say that there’s a quiet, gentle seat in the universe that seems to contain everything, and that’s where I am.”
“I don’t have to go anywhere. That’s fascinating to me now, the disappearing.” — Jim Carrey, in Jim & Andy (2017)
“Blessings on your journey”
Hope and Love on life's journey 