Changing the world one word at a time

I watched a movie called "Akeelah, the Spelling Bee" last weekend. The plot is about this young 11-yr old girl, with an incredible knack for spelling really bombastic words and how she made it up to the National Spelling Bee Competition.

In the movie, the words these kids are expected to spell far exceed what even adults have used or seen themselves. Words like “acromegaly,” "logorrhea", “soliterraneous” or “xanthosis”. Do you know that a kid may not have heard of the word before, but they are able to spell it (or at least make an educated guess) based on its origin (greek, latin, french etc) and definition? I also learnt that every big word is made up of many small words. If you know the small words, you can always piece them to spell the big ones.

Ok, so what is so exciting about watching a movie about spelling words? Nothing really. It is not a climatic (maybe just that part where she purposely mispelt a word so that her chinese opponent will be spared caning by overzealous slant eye father) but it does have its emotional moments. There are some friendship bits (whereby her best friend feels left out because she is not as clever as Akeelah), the family bits (how her single mother and ghetto brother helped her with the studying) and all those warm fuzzy stuffs you can expect of a "U" grade movie.

One thought provoking scene came from Laurence Fishburn who plays her spelling coach in the movie. She was facing some self esteem issues and worrying about getting out there to do this competiton. He made her read an extract written by Marianne Williamson (often miscreditted to Nelson Mandela) called 'Our Deepest Fear"

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

He asked her, 'So what does this mean?'. Her poignant child-like response is, "Er....that I shouldn't be scared of myself?"

And that is exactly right, my friend: You are capable of achieving the greatest things in life, and you know it. The difference between us and geniuses or sportspersons who breaks and sets records, is they think they can and we think we can't. Our negative mind is our only enemy. We are more than equipped by God to do all things, and we should not hesitate to do them because that's why we are here for.

Good to know eh? Now off you go to change the world.. babysteps please!