One of my favorite movies of all time is "Educating Rita." Now, I'm sure that it isn't on many people's top ten list (!), but I love it. I used it as a centerpiece of a Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" unit when I was teaching at the Community College of Vermont, and must have seen it dozens of times (sort of my own personal "Rocky Horror Picture Show," because I've memorized most of the dialogue and music!) Rita's wonderful journey out of the "cave" of being a poor, lower class British hairdresser, through a host of obstacles, to achieving an honors university degree, still seems as relevant today as it was in the early eighties, when the film was made. If you haven't seen it, do. Julie Walters and Michael Caine are marvelous.
Probably the most moving part of the story is when, once she realizes she will be successful in her degree, she lists the possible things she may do next with her life. There are four or five of them, from going to the South of France with some classmates, to getting a job, to going back for another degree, to having a baby. "I'll choose," she says. Education had given her a range of choices unavailable to her before -- and not all of them related directly to her degree.
It's been twenty-six years since I earned the last of my three post-high school degrees. It seems absurd, only now, to resonate with this fictional moment of choice, and yet, somehow I think it is the first time I have ever felt complete freedom to choose. Outward freedom had been in place, but not inner freedom. Not only that, but, perhaps in the wake of my brother's untimely death, the desire is welling up not to "die with [my] song still inside [me]," in the words of this wonderful book I'm working with, The Fire Starter Sessions, in the author's chapter on fear.
I'm so fascinated by history, the growth of humanity over time, my own history, that (particularly) of other women, spirituality, the "now," and the directions all of us, men and women, are going in from here. In this blog, when and how will I make choices about what to talk about? As words and ideas are suddenly tumbling out of me, I am new to self-editing lovingly, not fearfully. But I know one thing: "I'll choose."
