I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
~Jim Carrey”

And I like Jim Carrey because he’s an example of how extraordinary talent can sometimes be a shroud that covers grief and pain.

His openness in regard to some of the painful aspects of his childhood and subsequent rise from the ashes is what Hollywood legend is made of.

I can remember reading about the ten million dollar cheque Carrey wrote to himself for “acting services rendered” as a way of paving the road to his own destiny – and being completely inspired to do something similar for myself.

But as I get older, I ask myself what that was really about.

Is looking for large scale recognition just another way of filling up the empty spaces?

In the years since his rise to fame, there is a new sense of calm about Carrey that is difficult not to notice.

Where once he was erratic and exhausting to watch in an interview, now he’s peaceful and introspective.

I like this new version.

I like that he seems to be at peace with himself, his talent, his world.

I like that he seems happy, and that perhaps he has found new ways to fill the empty spaces, or at the very least, peacefully co-exist with them.

Which is the way of the true warrior to my mind.

Life is messy, and difficult, and painful.

But it is also beautiful.

And the more we are each willing to grab the brass ring to our own personal sense of well being and make choices that support our highest version of self, the more beautiful it all becomes.

Your world, my world, our world.

I make it sound so easy, I know.

In reality, much of 2010 has been a struggle for me and I’m tired of it.

Tired of feeling tired. Tired of stopping and starting. Tired of being my own worst enemy. and tired of accepting a second rate version of myself – which has been “good enough” certainly, but in the words of the great American recruitment slogan, I am not being all that I can be.

And I’d like to give that a shot.

I’d like to see in myself that same sense of personal tranquility and acceptance that I saw in Jim Carrey.

As it turns out, this is the thing most highly coveted.

Not fame, money, or all its trappings.

But something smaller, and warm, and certain that doesn’t go away after the last lights fade.

A Fabulously Good Life: Jim Carrey and My Personal Quest to Overcome