Thursday, April 3, 2008

The pieces of the puzzle

I have just watched Anastasia with my daughters for the third time...

The story goes something like this:
A princess loses her family and, in the process, loses the memory of the first years of her life. Her restlessness ends up taking her on a journey with two people who are really in it for the money, but end up being angels (metaphorically speaking). Slowly, through a series of clues, she starts remembering things about herself, without actually noticing. At the end of the story all the pieces come together and she remembers who she really is. At this moment - when she was finally reunited with her grandmother - I, in a strange way, felt that I identified with her. There was something in me that resonated with the discovery of something long forgotten - a coming home to who we really are.

I have a suspician that there is this place, this longing, in everyone, as if the Universe has left us clues, breadcrumbs along the way, to show us the way home. We see this in fairy tales, in the songs we sing our children, in the myths of old and in our dreams.

So where is home and how do we get there? The answer lies concealed in each one of us. Sometimes it takes a journey to remote places in the world, or a life time of searching. Sometimes it catches us unaware when we see the mystery in the depths of a new-born baby's eyes, or when the wind calls our name at the top of a mountain and we somehow know that there's something that we know that we know, but just can't seem to figure out what it is...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gavin - I always have an urge to comment on your posts, BUT:

1. Blogger forces an separate page and I hate retyping my details every time.
2. Can you configure it to display recent comments on the homepage?
3. Have you considered wordpress?

Gavin Marshall said...

Thanks Nic - I'll see what I can do. I have a wordpress account - but it's a bit of a mission to move all of this material over there.

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Anonymous said...

There's a great story about recognising what you are that I heard at the Cape Town School of Practical Philosophy:

A lion's parents are killed and the young cub is raised by sheep. He believes he is a sheep, behaves like a sheep and learns to be a sheep.

One day a lion comes along and roars. All the sheep bolt.

But the young cub doesn't budge. He recognises something in himself as he sees the lion. He recognises that 'he is that'.

And so they bound off to live happily ever after... perhaps eating sheep ;)

Gavin Marshall said...

That's a great story :)