The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
— Elizabeth Kubler Ross
As much as anything else, this book asks the question, “What will you do with your life?” Will you give it meaning? Will the meaning grow with age? Will you make it special?
What is the first step toward giving meaning to your life, the first step on the Road to Special? To me, it is gratitude.
Without gratitude, you can’t stand in awe of the gift of life. Without gratitude, you can’t marvel at the world, the universe that surrounds you. Without gratitude, you might start believing those blessings you count are created by . . . you. Oh, what a mistake.
You will never stay on the Road to Special if you take the road for granted. You won’t even get on the road. “Beautiful people do not just happen.”
The moment you understand this can be the moment you put every tool we’ve talked about to good use — perseverance, optimism, manners, work ethic — and build the special person you can be.
It only gets better from there. You now have a foundation for a personal style, a way of being, that burnishes your life — a style that demonstrates you know what you are doing and why.
So many times in this book, I have told you that you are on your own. Up until this point, these have been warnings, caution flags, so to speak. Now, though, you are on your own in a far different, and good, way. You are yourself on the Road to Special.
Does the question sound strange? Well, I think the end of a book is a good place to ask it. What will it be? I think you need to know. Why? Because you are writing it right now, today.
Okay, let’s say you’ve “lost a little humanity” and you don’t have a back button. How to regain it? Engage your forward button.
Start here and now.
You are the captain of your ship.
Put a little old fashioned Mary Ann in your life.
No matter what condition you were born into. No matter what condition you may have put yourself into, you can still right the course. It is your choice.
You can put the bad stuff behind you.
You can be the master of your condition.
Treat yourself the way you want to be treated.
Treat others that way, too.
Love yourself.
Respect your body.
Write down the values you want to live by.
Make those values your best friends.
Make them yours.
If you have self-respect you can never be brought down.
You will never go wrong by doing the right thing.
You will find that you are building a new Rest of Your Life. This is how you will be remembered. Here are top ten things I would like to be remembered as:
Kind. Thoughtful. Generous. Happy. Positive. Optimistic. Sensitive. Smart. Inquisitive. Curious. Opinionated. Strong. Loving. Selective. Challenging. Gentle. Sweet. Seductive . . . Hot.
That’s nineteen. Okay, I will never be remembered as “mathematical.”
Write what you think your epitaph should be. Now, put it somewhere visible — a place you see every day. Let it inspire you. The day may come when you will want to rewrite it. That may happen many times. Fine. Just keep the old ones. Read them somewhere down the Road to Special and watch yourself grow.
If you want to consider the Ginger or Mary Ann question in a new way, perhaps project a future for them. After they get off the island, then what?
My guess is that Ginger would return to Hollywood and resume playing . . . Ginger. She’d play that role until she aged and the music stopped.
Mary Ann was a Midwestern girl when she got on the island. In the America of 1964, this meant she was already five years behind the lifestyle in California. So, she was behind the times even before she got marooned.
After getting off the island, she would jump back into life but keep her code. She would discover the brand new women’s liberation movement and the brand new birth control pill the minute she stepped back on shore.
It wouldn’t faze her. There would be no bra burning for her. Who knows where she could end up. Back in Kansas? In a city? It really doesn’t matter.
Wherever she landed, she would contribute. It could be the PTA. It could be the mayor’s office.
She would contribute to society.
She would enhance her surroundings.
She would be an asset.
She would be a complete woman.
She would certainly entertain marriage and a family.
She would be a good partner, mother, and companion.
She would enhance any community where she resided.
Whatever goal she set, she would accomplish it. She would be full of passion toward everything she approached and she would be a fabulous, uninhibited lover.
POSTS FROM FACEBOOK
“In elementary school I was a slow learner. Students, teachers, my parents were very mean and cruel to me. My parents beat me. My childhood was a nightmare.
“I would come home from school. I had 30 minutes or so before my parents got home. I would watch Gilligan’s Island. It made me feel normal and it had special healing powers after surviving a terrible day in school or a night of not waking up in the emergency room at the hospital.
“I used to pray that I would die in my sleep or wish I had the courage to run away to escape this life that I had. Gilligan’s Island helped me a lot to survive my childhood.
“I haven’t seen shows like Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Jeannie, or even a Bugs Bunny cartoon in years. I really miss those shows. The shows on TV now are not acceptable for any child to watch.
“TV shows back then sold HOPE from reality. Forget your current problems and visit a world of make believe, entertains you if only just for a few minutes. Fills your body with good if only just for a little bit. Thank you for filling my childhood with one good memory.”
Friend post on the Dawn Wells Facebook page, 2013
It won’t be easy to remake Gilligan’s Island in the manner that Sherwood intended. Mary Ann was a virgin. Casting will be difficult.
Would she be a wife?
Would she be ambitious?
Would she be a good mother?
Would she be a politician?
Would she be an executive?
What would Mary Ann do? You tell me . . . www.dawn-wells.com and facebook.com/therealmaryann.
THE END
