Do you know what I like about the fact of having a lot of tv channels ? It can be really surprising when you zap without knowing what to watch… that is what happened tonight.
It’s my birthday and we had a tough day because our two daughters were A LOT excited in the “bad” way… so when they were finally asleep, even if it was only 8:45pm, we didn’t want to watch a DVD (fearing to fall alseep during it) so we started zapping… and discovered that a channel was about to air a movie about Spelling Bee.
The little story is that around a month ago, I conviced Cheridoo to watch a movie on that subject but we didn’t get into it (the title is “The Bee season”, with a French actress I appreciate and Richard Gere), we stopped it before the end. Oops.
I wish France (where we are from) schools would run this kind of contest, but it simply does not exist.
This movie is called Akeelah and the Bee, it’s produced by Laurence Fishburne (who will always be my Morpheus ;)), he plays one of the main characters.
It’s the story of Akeelah Anderson, 11 years old, who live in Los Angeles with her mother and brothers/sisters. Her dad died when she was 6. She attends a school where kids are majorly Black people, she is a smart girl and she is really good at spelling and scrabble… Her teacher recommends her to sign up for the school spelling contest, which she wins easily; that is where she mets Dr Larabee who will become her coach. But it is not that easy. She’ll have to face a lot of thing but above all, her own fears.
At the beginning of her coaching, Dr Larabee asks her to read loudly a quotation (in the film, it’s said that it is from Nelson Mandela but in reality it is from Marianne Williamson) that I printed and will pin somewhere I can always see it when I doubt. I want to share it with you:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Because most of the time, we forget that we are all meant to shine, that we are made of light despite the darkness we encounter in our life.
YOU ARE MEANT TO SHINE, and so AM I.