James Lee Stanley

Flying back from the Northeast Region Folk Alliance (www.nerfa.org) I watched a film called Julia/Julie, starring Meryl Streep (www.merylstreep.com) as Julia Child, the famous chef.  (www.pbs.org/juliachild/ )

The story itself was wonderful as Child did not even take a French cooking lesson until she was 49, so she started late in this new career.   For those of you who are unaware of her, she changed the way people cooked and ate by virtue of creating a French cookbook in English that became a huge best seller.   She had a cooking show on TV and she was also six feet tall.  She was pretty different than most of the women of the time in most respects.

But the thing that was most resonant to  me after the story was the performance by Ms Streep.   Meryl Streep is only about five foot two.    She was playing a woman six feet tall.

The set designers obviously created furniture that was smaller than average, so that helped, but it was her performance that sold the movie.    She nailed Julia Child's voice and mannerisms and her commitment to the role was total.

That was the thing that I kept thinking about after the film ended.   She is clearly a gifted actress and a well trained one, but that’s  not enough to create the performance that she delivered.

She brings to every role that commitment and a commitment to honor her particular gifts.

It is  not enough to be talented.   When you discover your gift you automatically receive responsibility for developing that gift and then not only maintaining that gift, but doing all you can to share that gift and to help it to grow.

You can’t just coast because you have a nice voice or a gift for an instrument or mimicry or acting or medicine, mathematics or whatever.   We are all given a gift for something.

Take the time and the energy to discover what it is and then do all you can to develop it so that you can, by virtue of your gift, give back to the universe that provided that gift to begin with.

You don’t do it for the applause, or the money.   You do it because you should and you must.   Your rewards if you follow this path of responsibility are profound, and joyous and enriching.  

Trust me on this one.