Tag: the white lotus

Just the Same

“This is one of The White Lotus’s best tricks: introducing us to entitled characters who we’re supposed to loathe, while at the same time knowing that, deep down, we’re not entirely unlike them.” 

“it was a moment many of us will recognize, where you realize that a decades-long friendship is now primarily held together by its own history, rather than shared values in the present. And if you want it to continue, you might have to look the other way.”

“I think the show is asking a much more exposing question: At our core, do we really change all that much from who we were in high school?”

(quotes from Louis Staples, Bazaar)

I love watching the The White Lotus series. It’s one of my favorite series on TV and I am honestly pretty picky about what I watch. I typically much prefer to watch movies over television. This season three of the The White Lotus series is particularly outsized in its explorations of human psyche and dynamics. This season is definitely more hair-raising and fearless than the previous two seasons (which says a lot), and it certainly won’t be for everyone. (prepare to be sickened – prepare to squirm – prepare to see things that you wish that you could wash eyes out after viewing them)

Interestingly, the most intriguing “story within the story” for many people (and one of the actresses Leslie Bibb is actually surprised by this. She thought that maybe the friendship story would be considered the most boring of all of the subplots, but this is not proving to be the case) is about a trio of high school friends who have gone in all different directions, but still, in their middle forties, remain friends, and have taken a reunion trip in Thailand together, in order to reconnect. But the rest of the story, is a story that is as old as time. The rest of the story (at least so far – we are six episodes into the total of eight episodes which make up this season) is just another modern day version of “Mean Girls“. And if you are a woman, you’ve never had to watch the Mean Girls movie to already know the script (you could probably write it). You can probably guess that the script is full of competition, fake-ness, and passive aggressive behaviors and comments, and some backstabbing, and some gossip, and some more gossip, cleverly being painted as “concern.” And if you are an honest woman, you can admit to yourself that your own self has fallen into one or more, of the not too pretty, surface-level, stereotypical versions of “friend” in various friend groups throughout your lifetime. The friendship being depicted in this season of White Lotus is relatable, but it’s not flattering to any of the friends. It’s triggering. It’s hard to admit toxicity in relationships that mean a lot to you, for the amount of time and energy which you have invested in them. It’s hard to own up to your own unhealthy contributions to a toxic dynamic. It’s hard to face that even in your middle-aged years, you may not have changed as much from your high school years, as you think that you have evolved. That is the trick of The White Lotus. If you have enough humble self-awareness, you can own your humanity, with all of its foibles and flaws and thus, feel more compassion for yourself and for others.

I love to go to Reddit and read people’s thoughts on each new episode of The White Lotus. The friendship trio gets a lot of women admitting to experiencing, and also being part of friendships like the one depicted in the show, for most of their lives. I’ve witnessed my daughter experiencing these dynamics throughout her childhood into college. I’ve witnessed the elder women in my life still experiencing these dynamics in their retirement circles. I honestly don’t know one woman in my life who hasn’t experienced some unhealthy dynamics in her friendships throughout her lifetime. It’s not the story that we like to tell ourselves, though. Our “besties” are our chosen family. Our friends know us better than anyone. Elbert Hubbard’s famous quote is this: “A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.”

And I think the quote by Hubbard is the complicated truth. Our friends are human. Our friends are flawed. We, as individuals, are human. We, as individuals, are flawed. Therefore our human relationships are fragile and flawed. A true friend knows these things about you. And more importantly, a true friend knows these things about themselves. And so, if underneath it all, there is true authenticity and vulnerability in a relationship, despites all of the flaws that everyone brings to the table, you deeply love each other just the same.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Better Than the Queen of Monaco

“I thought I was going to be queen of Monaco even though someone else did it. [Laughter] But I had these giant ideas. And then you get older and, oh, s*** is going to happen. And, Mike White, you have given me hope. You’ve given me a new beginning. . . .

“This is something all of you, if you don’t know Mike White, this is what you should know: He is worried about the world, he’s worried about people, he’s worried about friends of his that aren’t doing well, he’s always worried about people, you’re worried about animals, and he really is one of the greatest people I’ve ever … He gives me so much excitement to be—you make people want to live longer, and I didn’t.” – from last night’s speech from 61-year-old actress Jennifer Coolidge, who won a Golden Globe for The White Lotus last night, about the creator of the show, Mike White

“. . . .you make people want to live longer and I didn’t.” Wow. Have you ever heard a better compliment? And this is about a Hollywood guy! When has that ever happened before?! My regular readers know that I’m a huge fan of The White Lotus series and I have previously written about Jennifer Coolidge’s ‘big break’ coming to her later in life, which is a rare thing, particularly for women in Hollywood.

From Jennifer Coolidge’s Golden Globe acceptance speech, it is my belief that these accolades and appreciation couldn’t have happened to two more deserving people. Jennifer, for slogging along, continuing to work feverishly at her passion, even if she thought that her days of a “big break” were over, and to Mike, for being that guy who cares – Mike cares about people, his friends, animals. . . . Jennifer’s whole speech was about what a wonderful, loving person and being Mike White is, without even beginning to mention his incredible talent as a writer and director.

My favorite trainer at my Local Stretchlab has experienced more than her fair share of difficulties in life. Raised in Guam, she had to drop out of medical school to take care of her mother and grandmother, who both had cancer and when they passed, her father became ill and so she cared for him, while still trying to manage the family business. It is only in the last five years or so that my trainer has been able to focus on herself and her own adult life. She is married to a marine, and yesterday they were celebrating their three-year wedding anniversary. She told me that she was taking the entire weekend off to celebrate with him. My trainer told me that for most of her life, she never dreamed that she would marry, and she is so utterly thrilled and grateful to be married to the man of her dreams. We both agreed that the beauty of difficult times, is that the harder that they were, the more they make you appreciate and savor the wonderful times in life. When you know just how low and difficult life can get, the gratitude which you feel for the smooth, amazing times is almost overwhelming.

If you are in a point in your life when you feel like your ship has sailed, be like Jennifer, and just hang on. Keep doing what is meaningful to you. It ain’t over ’til it’s over. You really have no idea where this journey is taking you. The most meaningful, exciting times of your life could easily be right around the corner. And while you’re at it, be like Mike, care. Care about people, and friends, and animals. Be like Mike and be the kind of person who makes people want to live longer. And when you get to a point in your life when you finally (and maybe even surprisingly) get something that you always wanted but started to lose hope of ever getting, be like my Stretchlab trainer and take a long weekend off to simmer in the joy and gratitude of it all! Because of slogging through the tough times, you get the equal and opposite feeling of utter bliss!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Get Your Sh*t Together, Portia

I am an ardent fan of this new season of The White Lotus. Sunday’s finale can’t come soon enough, even with everything that I need to be getting done this week. If you are squeamish about sex and nudity, avoid the show, but otherwise, indulge! The White Lotus is so intriguing and the characters are fascinatingly flawed, and thus extremely interesting to get to know. Jennifer Coolidge plays Tanya, the only main character from the first season to return. Tanya is an insecure, emotionally immature, aimless, only child who has inherited half a billion dollars. She is ridiculously needy and oblivious. In short, no one really should take any advice from Tanya, but in the scene below she doles out advice to her assistant, Portia. Her bottom line is “Get your sh*t together, Portia.” (I imagine that this line is quickly going to become one of those cultural meme taglines, if it isn’t already)

There was a time in my life, that if I were Portia, I would have thought, “You must be kidding, Tanya. Who the hell are you to ever tell anyone to get their sh*t together?” I would have scoffed and brushed it off quickly. In short, I would have “shot” the messenger.

However, I am older and wiser now. Some of the best advice I have ever gotten has come from people who have learned things the hard way, through difficult experiences. Their advice comes from an earnest hope to help others avoid the same miserable difficulties which they have gone through. Experience is always the best teacher, but if you can vicariously learn from other people’s experiences, this really helps to dodge some scary bullets. As an eldest child, I have always felt a special empathy for my own eldest child. The eldest child tends to make a lot of mistakes that the younger siblings (if they are smart) learn to avoid making themselves.

For years, trying to work through “stuff” on my own, I avoided therapy. I was told that therapists just went to school to study psychology in order to fix themselves. I wasn’t going to take any advice from any messed up person who needed fixing. But then I lived long enough to realize everyone needs some fixing. I have never met one person in my life who has all of their “sh*t together” in every facet of their lives. So then it occurred to me that perhaps it is not such a bad thing to get advice from a person who is self-aware enough to admit that they need some fixing, go to school for it, and then try to help others with their gained knowledge. So back in the 1990s, I went to therapy for the first time, and I learned all about narcissism, boundaries, gaslighting, codependency, etc. And now I look at the internet and I see that the whole world is just catching up to these terms and their meanings, which helped me immensely, decades ago.

The gist of this post is “Don’t shoot the messenger.” But don’t put the messenger on a pedestal either. The messenger, no matter who they are: a therapist, a minister, a priest, a yogi, a rabbi, a writer, a relative, a friend, a boss, a mentor etc. is just another flawed human being, just like you and me. Trust your own intuition. If the message resonates deeply, the message is meant for you to learn from it and to gain knowledge and wisdom from it. If the message seems a little “off” to you, trust your inner judgment, even if the message is coming from someone whom you deeply respect. Messages often come from the most unusual, and unlikely sources. And don’t discount good messages either, just because you later find out that the messenger was not the perfect angel of God whom you had built them up to be. (That’s on you.) The message itself was always the gold that shows you that the answers that you need, are always deep inside of you, yourself. The messengers whom we come across in life are just people, who are working on their own sh*t, who are used as the vehicles to pass on this gold of unveiled understanding and wisdom that resonates from the depths and the portals of our own souls.

So I say to you (and to me) today, “Get your sh*t together.” If you feel like this message resonates, run with it. If not, discard it. And know that I am just a writer, a scribe, a person with a passion for the written word. I have my merits and I have my warts, but my message is its own separate entity. Don’t shoot the messenger.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Weird, Lucky Moment

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

I watched a fascinating interview with Jennifer Coolidge, an actress, who at the age of 61, is at the height of her career so far, mostly for her Emmy winning role as Tanya, in the HBO streaming series, “The White Lotus.” Jennifer Coolidge first broke out in Hollywood, twenty-three years ago, playing the original MILF, as “Stifler’s mom” in the wacky, outrageous movie, “American Pie.” And she’s played in a lot of other movies since then, but now, with years of working at her craft under her belt, at the age of 61, Jennifer Coolidge is finally considered to be “a star.”

In the interview, Jennifer calls this time in her career a “weird, lucky moment.” She says this: “It’s way more enjoyable if you never expected the moment to happen. I think it is the surprise of it all that makes it so fun.”

Jennifer Coolidge says that she thinks that the reason why people have had such a big response to her is this: “I think a lot of people want to feel like they have a chance at something that maybe they thought was a missed chance, and I think I’m a good example of that.” She says that people are now looking for relatableness and authenticity more than ever in shows and entertainment. “I feel like maybe the people who are watching streaming shows aren’t as in love with perfection, as previous audiences.”

There is real beauty and profundity, when you are coming into the height of yourself, later in life. As you age, it is easier to understand and to appreciate those “weird, lucky moments” that seem to come from out of nowhere, when you were least expecting them to arrive. When those “weird, lucky moments” happen, you shockingly realize, that as it turns out, you weren’t forgotten by the forces that be. All along, you were ripening on the tree of life, just doing your thing – that thing that you love and makes you feel alive, and then, who knew? Suddenly, it’s your time to be picked as the golden apple!

The wonderful thing about coming into your own, later in life, is that gratefulness and appreciation is easier to feel. If you age long enough and gracefully enough and thoughtfully enough, then you’ve lived enough life to understand that living life itself is enough. Life is the experience. Everything else is just the cherry on top. Jennifer Coolidge has a great attitude about this time in her life. Mostly, she is savoring it. She says this:

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have a year like this again, so I’m just enjoying it ’til it ends.”

Perhaps, this is really the point of living, itself. Who knows?