Sunday, January 30, 2011

Date Night

Last night, my husband and I went to see “The King’s Speech”. It was one of the most profound movies I have seen.  The story line is simple, yet very complex.  There are so many messages that it is difficult to narrow it down to just one. As I descended the theatre steps, it occurred to me that each person in the audience would be interpreting the movie differently depending on their own personal past.

For me, the role that the shilling played was the most significant as it resembled the lifetime burden that King George VI had held his entire life and caused his stammering. The shilling, displaying a portrait of his father on one side, is the symbol of choice for all of us. It reiterates that we all have a past, some of it great, some of it not so great, and that we have the ability to choose how much we allow the good and the bad to control our destiny.

What the King decides to do with the shilling is a lesson in integrity. Will he continue to carry it around in his pocket, or give it away? We all carry demons in our pockets; they are true outside experiences that we store in our memories. They are only real because we experienced them; they are not necessarily congruent with our values or beliefs. It is our integrity and how we act on our memories that influences whether or not we allow the past to interfere with our choices of the present.

The only way that we can be whole is to listen to our integrity, our inner selves. We need to weed out the things in our lives that are not consistent with what our inner self is telling us. Allowing ourselves to be changed against all better inner judgement and as a result of someone else’s interactions with us, is a debilitating force against what we know is true. If we allow what people in our past did or said to control our views, we begin to fight our integrity and this creates lack of authenticity.

Being true to yourself involves, not just listening to your inner voice, but choosing to follow through by allowing it to speak with your outer voice. Making this choice aligns your inner self with your outer self, and you have achieved the beauty of being whole.

How do “The King’s Speech”, integrity and a shilling create the concept of being whole? You really should see this movie!!!!



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