My sister drug me to see Julie & Julia with her a couple of days ago. Yeah, I know.
But for real… it was a great movie. And you can quote me on that.
I remember watching Julia Child on PBS as a kid growing up, don’t ask me why. And, I also remember the infamous Saturday Night Live skits.
She’s an icon.
But, I guess I never thought about how she got her start and became so good at French cooking. Sometimes we don’t think about that kind of stuff… people’s backstories. Oftentimes we just see the success and not the journey and obstacles people had to face that got them there, which is in most cases more significant.
So, the movie is partly her story and the story of Julie Powell, a girl who was living in NYC in 2002 who decided to blog her way through all of Julia Child’s recipes in the span of a year and blogged the entire journey as a creative outlet.
The movie parallels both of their stories… two women who were essentially bored who found a passion for cooking that was life-giving to them. They found life in their creativity. Their passion gave them joy when life around them was boring and at times incredibly difficult.
Being the geek that I am, one of the parts that I found most fascinating about the movie, other than learning the story of Julia Child’s rise to fame, was to see how much blogging has developed and shaped our culture in recent years.
In 2002, it was still a rather novel thing and it’s interesting to see and hear about Julie’s journey of understanding the blogging world.
But back to the movie… the thing that stuck out the most to me was the importance of finding something you are passionate about and pursuing it. There will definitely be some letdowns along the way, but if you go for it and count the cost, you can do some really significant things as you pursue your passions.
I heard someone once say whatever you are passionate about is often key to your calling.
Julie and Julia were passionate about cooking (and eating!)… one changed the way people cooked and the other changed her life and got a great book (and movie) out of it.
So anyway, if you want to be inspired you should see it. I think there were some really redeeming lessons to learn about life, passion, and even marriage in this story.
And, I think Meryl Streep deserves an Oscar for her performance in this movie. She was brilliant.
What are you passionate about? What are you willing to overcome obstacles for?
Find out what “it” is and go for it.
