Title Letter
Subtitle
Title: What Got In?
Subtitle: On the stories that wired us before we knew it.
What Wired You?
Hello fellow learn-it-all 👋 Greetings from Boca Raton, Florida ☀️ I’m heading to go meditate with Michael Singer this weekend and perhaps finally finished my annual review. I’m excited :) Now, let’s dive into letter 306 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!
How do we get our wiring as people?
I've been taking unplugged walks on the beach lately. No podcast. No playlist. Just sand in my toes. Shiny smooth shells I hunted in my hands, and humming then singing whatever comes out of my mouth.
Last week, something came out of my mouth that surprised me. A song. Then another. Then I realized I was full-on performing Part of Your World to the Atlantic Ocean, word for word, note for note, completely unselfconscious. Passersby would smile.
I've known that song for about as long as I knew how to form a song. So most of my whole life. I didn't have to think about it. It just lived in me. In seventh grade, for my music class lip-sync assignment, I dressed up as Aerial, and that was my song. Mrs. Chrisener was pleased.
A few weeks ago I first watched the 1998 Nora Ephron film You've Got Mail. There’s a scene where the small bookstore owner Kathleen Kelly says that “When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.”
I love this idea. But I didn't really read as a kid. Movies were easier for me. Plus they were how my family bonded, how I absorbed stories, how the world made more sense to me. (I'd later learn I'm dyslexic, which explains a lot.) So similar to Kathleen Kelly’s character about how childhood stories wire us, then for me, it wasn't books. It was films.
And chief among them: The Little Mermaid.
I rewatched it recently. Cried through most of it. Sang every word.
And somewhere between Ariel longing for a world she'd never touched and Sebastian pleading with her to stay where she was safe. Then I started to wonder: did this movie make me who I am? How would my life look if I never consumed this movie?