I watched a beautifully told and filmed movie last night called "Under the Tuscan Sun" about a recently divorced American woman who goes on holiday to Tuscany to get away from the depression and all else that is associated with divorce. While there, she impulsively buys a run-down Italian villa, which becomes the centerpiece of the reconstruction and reinvention of her life as she sets about restoring the place.

What struck me about this story is the capacity we all have to adapt and to find opportunity, if we can lift our eyes from our immediate situation and take some time to glance around. Opportunities abound, often in the most unlikely of places. These opportunities, however, require a certain degree of risk, and potential failure. But when they succeed, and they eventually will, a reinvention and restoration takes place.

I have always wondered, for example, why people commit suicide over lost loves. This seems to me to be a terrible waste and perpetuates the ridiculous myth that there is only one true love in the world for each of us. I like the final line of the movie "Practical Magic" in which Sandra Bullock, who could easily be my one true love if she gave me a chance, says that one thing we must do is "fall in love as often as possible". It seems to make sense to me that if the love was lost, then it wasn't "true" and that means, if you believe it, that the true love you thought you had is still out there somewhere waiting to be found. Killing yourself is revenge, not resolution.

Having been through this process of divorce, depression, regrets, restoration and reinvention, I think I know something of the process. I live by the maxim that nothing lasts forever, neither good nor bad, and therefore what's good needs to be enjoyed while it lasts and the bad needs to be endured until you find the good to replace it, which will inevitably happen.

There was a time in my life when I thought that I was all that I was ever going to be. Now I know better. I am constantly reinventing myself and will never be all that I am going to be. That's exciting!

2 May 2004

Dion Marc Delport

Comment on this article in my Guestbook

Back to Dion's Home Page