Are you in the club?
I’m in the club. The Greatest Showman Fan club. I even bought the soundtrack before I left the movie theater! I didn’t want to be here. In fact, I avoided the club. I avoided seeing the movie, so I wouldn’t have to join the club if I liked it. I didn’t want to be one more voice to the ongoing chorus. I didn’t want to be a sheep. I find that sometimes when something (a movie, a song, a commercial) becomes popular and constantly talked about, it disappoints me. It was set up to be greater than it actually was. Very rarely does something that is so hyped and living virally in our digital universe actually live up to the expectations established for it — in my universe.
The Greatest Showman actually did — in my universe.
Triumph. Tragedy. Empowerment. Bullying. Beginnings. Endings. It has the hero’s story. It has the little guy. It has the little guy falling. It has the little guy winning. It has the hero falling. It has the hero finding his path. It has multiple heroes all finding thier way.
In our digital universe, you get glimpses of movies and snapshots of time. You assume what you see is the gyst of the movie. You logically know this isn’t correct, but you are human. Humans assume things. The song “This is Me” is beautiful and I felt like I knew what the movie would provide for me because of this song. Before I went to the movie, this behind the scenes You Tube video had me crying. Yet, still I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon.
Today, I had “found” time. It rarely happens for me.I had lots of things that I should have been doing. I knew that I needed to do something different than one of the shoulds on my list. My sanity depended on it. So, why not see something I shouldn’t see based on my own standards when I was trying desperately to do something I shouldn’t be doing. I decided to take myself on a date to see “The Greatest Showman”.
There were many things I loved about the movie. For now, I’ll stay on the topic of this song and why I was pleased that I was wrong about the meaning I had assigned it. The song is brilliant. It is an anthem. But it wasn’t the anthem I thought it was. I had decided (before seeing the movie) that this song was about her standing up TO something. That it was about her deciding she needed to stand up FOR her friends and TO the disbelievers. No. It was even MORE powerful than that. This was Lettie (the “bearded lady”) deciding she was powerful. She had been given a glimpse of what life was like out of the shadows. This song was her choosing to STAY in the light. This song was about her CHOOSING her power. And standing up to BE her. Not for anyone else or to anyone else. Just to BE her.
Moments before the song in the movie, she experienced yet another moment of being shamed for who she was. An important person in her life essentially said, “You aren’t good enough for me.” And that is what each of us is trying to be. We are trying to be good enough to be in the tribe. Good enough to be loved. Good enough to be seen. Good Enough to exist.
“This is Me” is Lettie saying, “I am Enough.”
How many times in your life do you doubt being enough? I do at least daily. I wish I could say I was stronger than that. Smarter than that. But it’s daily.
The thing that happens when you do decide you are enough, is that you give yourself permission to be you. Until you give yourself this permission slip, you are playing other people’s games. You are hiding. You are pleasing. You are being polite. You are acquiesing. You are being less than you.
This was Lettie’s example to me today. I know I’m enough. I give myself permission to be me. When I forget, I will remember the bearded lady in all her gloriousness and the beautiful tribe she was surrounded by.
Isn’t it time that you be you? The world could use more of you.
I know the world could use more of me.
I choose my Power.
I choose to love myself.
I choose to be enough.
I choose to be me.
I’m in the club of “Being Enough”. Will you join me?
