Slow

Sunday I was an audience member in the play "The Wizard of Oz," and I cannot think of a better way I could have spent my afternoon. Aside from the amazing performances, energetic and talented dancers dancing, scarecrow falling with grace and perfection, and magical characters filling the theatre with sentimentality and sweetness, I finally took the story's message into my brain: everyone only and already has exactly what they need inside of themselves, and as soon as they know it they will find it. All that singing, dancing and fantastical characters and scenery had consistently distracted me from the obvious. I had understood it and heard the message the first time I read the book, with the lion and the scarecrow and the tin man, but this time, I didn't realize it was true for Dorothy as well. When I knew that, it all suddenly clicked and somehow that realization offered layers of new dimensions of understandings for me -- how we make all our choices and how only we can hold ourselves back.