Something About Miranda

I love ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, it’s a witty, colourful fast moving romp. I was watching it again the other night on cable and suddenly it hit me. The movie has a message and the message is not about what shade of blue the colour cerulean is. It’s about choices and making them.

Life is all about making choices and then taking responsibility for them.

Simple choices are easy, we make them with out thinking, every second of every day; tea or coffee, toast or bran, bus or train. But it’s not just the little things we choose; it’s the big, life altering, reality shifting things as well. These are the ones we’re always quick to blame someone else for especially if they go pear shaped. If it’s a good outcome then of course its “yes I knew all along that I had to make that decision and now seemed like the right time”. We’re all happy to take responsibility for the good things. It’s the tough things, the hard choices that we like to shift blame for.

It’s the hard choices we make that define us.

The concept of taking responsibility for our own actions is becoming something of a rarity in these 'victim consciousness' days. Someone else is always to blame. ‘You make me feel bad; you make me sad, you make me so angry’, and even better, there is always someone lurking around the corner that is more than happy to put up their hand and say, “hang on you’re right, it was my fault – I did it. Blame me”.

In the movie, Andy played by Anne Hathaway, constantly uses the excuse, “That's not what I... no, that was different. I didn't have a choice”. Whether it’s missing her boyfriends’ birthday party or firing Emily, it’s Miranda’s fault. Finally Miranda, played by Meryl Streep, turns to her in the limousine in Paris and says, “No, no, you chose. You chose to get ahead. You want this life. Those choices are necessary.” Miranda for all her faults which are as numerous as they are enormous at least has the courage to stand up and take responsibility for the choices she has made.

In the end no choice we make is bad as long as we own that choice. Everything provides an opportunity for us to learn and grow. Some choices may in the short term seem better than others but we have to look long term, see things in perspective. There is no point in sinking into the abyss because things ‘ain’t’ working out the way we had planned. Forward motion is the thing that keeps creating opportunity. Sure there will always be something that we look back on and think ‘maybe if I had done this rather than that then it might be different now but who knows’.

Barack Obama’s mantra has been, 'Yes We Can'. Our mantra should be, ‘Yes I Do’. If we say it often enough then we will begin to believe that Yes I Do create my own reality. Yes I do make choices; yes I do take responsibility for those choices, not only personally but nationally and globally.

We are responsible for the society we are creating, each one of us. We are ALL responsible for the Cronulla race riots, we are ALL responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, we are ALL responsible for the state of Aboriginal health, we are ALL responsible for the man who dies alone in his council flat and is not discovered for a year.

As our communities have become more fragmented and urban isolation becomes more of a way of life for so many, we have started to see ourselves as islands; once our homes were castles now our castles have shrunk to the size of tiny rooms cut off from man and nature. More and more we live our lives in front of an LCD screen counting a curser as our best friend.

Like Andy we can choose to get out of that limousine anytime we want and reclaim our right to choose a better reality.