I just read this quote in a MORE Magazine story about Diane Keaton:
“She lives her life in question marks and exclamation points, and listening to her is like drinking Champagne: pretty soon you feel giddy, too.”
When you read those words above, as excellently written by MORE Mag writer Johanna Schneller, can’t you just picture Ms. Keaton’s smile, laugh, bubbly personality, and effervescent presence? I can. I think she is a remarkable example of vitality for women of any age. She’s also stylish as all get-out and her hair always looks fab. (OK, I know she has a cadre of stylists to care for her, but still…) However, the greatest measure of her presence is due more to her confidence, her ebullient personality, and her wisdom as a woman ‘of a certain age’ than to her physical appearance.
I’d love to live my life in a way that could be so perfectly and succinctly captured.
As children, we are all asked ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’.
My answer was always something creative: The glassblower at Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle, or the cake decorator at Knott’s Berry Farm. Then, ‘Interior Decorator’ was the answer that stuck with me for years.
If someone asks me ‘What do you do?’, as often happens when meeting new people, I tell them I am a retail visual designer, speaker, and writer, and also co-owner of a company that produces recycled/restyled home furnishings. What I’ve realized is that these kinds of questions are about what kind of service, product, or intellectual property we provide to the world as our job or career. It’s not really about US – who we are. And I’d rather focus on that, thankyouverymuch.
So that’s my goal right now: define to myself, for myself, who I am NOW. Not just that I am a woman, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, business owner…. but what am I about? What do I believe? What do I stand for and support? How do I express myself and reach out to others? How am I perceived, and how will I be remembered when my time here is done? What words would an interviewer choose to describe the essence of my life, my personality, who I AM, in one succinct sentence? Heck, I can’t even do that right now. Time to get my ‘elevator speech’ together – if only for myself, to have the knowledge of who Deb really is right now.
I know I will change – as I have many times in my life, moving from place to place both physically and spiritually. As we walk through life’s journey, old friends and opportunities are left behind and new ones welcomed (as Miss Kimberly is finding out). Our own personalities and beliefs and goals evolve and change. Our physical features may be altered to the point of not being recognizable even to ourselves (as Miss Stephanie is growing through, bless her sweet heart). It’s not that we are playing different roles, like actress Keaton, but that every step brings us new opportunities to discover more about ourselves. We dig deeper, and delve into the secrets and dreams and hurts to discover and define who we are and where we are headed. It’s a necessary part of life, of womanhood, of growth as a human. No one else can do that for us.
But a good reporter with a well-turned phrase sure helps… which brings me to this: Should my effusive use of exclamation points and ellipses in my writing be included in my life’s synopsis? “She lives her life in exclamation points and ellipses, filled with enthusiasm and wonderment at discovering the world around her”... ;0)
