Saying "I Like You So Much"

I really have come to believe that life is not just a series of random events. Things do happen for a reason. The thoughts that I'm writing right now came to me for a reason and you're reading them right now for a reason: to receive a message, for insight, a chance to laugh, or to plant a seed for future growth or perhaps send it to someone you think could use it. We all attract thoughts, things, people and circumstances into our lives with the thoughts we think, over and over and over. "What gets your attention eventually gets you." - Joel Olsteen

For proof of this look at 1993's historically accurate and research-proven "Groundhog Day"

("No it's not true." - Eddie Izzard
"Yes it is true." - Eddie Izzard)

I think this movie does express a universal truth. If we mainly think about how we can take from others and take from life then others and life will take from us; our happiness, dreams, real love, etc. And we end up repeating the same day again and again, day after day.

However, if we dominate our thinking with new thoughts about achieving our dreams ("Our longing is our calling" - Louise Hay) and on what we can give to others and to life then others and life will give to us. The first question I ask my students at the beginning of each school year is "What will you do that will last forever? What will you give to the world that will be so wonderful, that it will make the world so much better, that it will be remembered long after your death?" (see "The Importance of Genius")

I hadn't thought about the movie "Meet Joe Black" (1999) in a long time until the other day. I kept hearing the words of one of the beginning scenes in my head again and again, and it wouldn't leave me alone. This happened to Bill (Anthony Hopkins) as "Death" rented space in his head before taking over Brad Pitt's body (easy ladies, he's still "Death").

The day after having someone move into my head and start talking to me I saw Harold Loyd's "The Kid Brother"(1927) and heard those same thoughts again. The next day it was during Gary Cooper's "The Cowboy and The Lady" (1938) that I kept hearing lines from "Meet Joe Black" being said in my head. Last night, as if by some great coincidence, on a channel I never watch or turn to when I'm looking for something to help me sleep, "Meet Joe Black" was on. Scary!

Realizing death is at his doorstep, Bill has thoughts he feels compelled to share with his daughter before it's too late. She's in a relationship that her father feels she's settling for. This father has found success in all areas, including still being wonderfully in love with his wife Joan who has passed away, just as my grandmother still writes "Bette loves Jim" on the crossword puzzles she does every day.

Maybe this is a message for me. Maybe it's a message for you. Maybe this is a message for someone you know. Or maybe this is my way of sharing wisdom with my own daughters when they're older in case I'm not given the opportunity to do it in person. Our thoughts can last forever in the written word, even if we can't.

This is the father-daughter conversation between Bill and his daughter Susan:

Do you love Drew?...It's not what you say about him it's what you don't say....There's not an ounce of excitement, not a whisper of a thrill. This relationship has all the passion of a pair of titmice. I want you to get swept away. I want you to levitate. I want you to sing with rapture and dance like a dervish...Be deliriously happy or at least leave yourself open to be.

I know it's a cornball thing. But love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. I say fall head over heels and find someone you can love like crazy who will love you the same way back. How do you find him? Well, you forget your head and listen to your heart.

I'm not hearing any heart. Because the truth is honey there's no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven't lived a life at all. But you have to try, because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived.

Stay open. Who knows? Lightening could strike.

Later that morning Susan meets Joe in a coffee shop for the first time. She resists what she's feeling for him until he says "I don't know. Lightening could strike." She confesses that what he said was so right it was scary. He tells her he was thinking that he doesn't want her to be his doctor because "I like you so much". She says she doesn't want him to be her patient because "I like you so much".



And that's how it starts.





And how lightening strikes.




May we all find another we like so much that lightening strikes........