Natalie Portman

I've been quiet for a bit. Not because I haven't been writing. I've been up late writing almost every night. But you can only write so much in so many different places or to so many different people. I started to title this entry "What I've Been Reading," and though this qualifies, I'll save that for a separate post.

Today's Parade contained a great little piece by Natalie Portman, titled simply, "What I've Learned (So Far)." Among those things she's learned was "Always Maintain a Sense of Hope."

Sometimes it’s hard to maintain a sense of hope. It’s impossible to know the outcome of anything: You have no idea whether the life you impact will go on to bring peace to the Middle East or will go blow up a building. All you can do is act with the best intention and have faith. Maybe it’s selfish, but I just don’t think it’s worth living if you don’t feel like you can change something. It’s a choice you can make: to have joy, to find joy and to spread joy.

I've spent much of my life being disappointed by pretty women with little depth. It will likely take me another lifetime or two to really learn not to expect physical beauty and internal beauty to be at least somewhat correlative. It's a lesson Ms. Portman doesn't really help with. Aside from being a talented actress (I've rarely come away from a film with her in it that I didn't think her contribution probably the most memorable thing about the entire effort--including the thoroughly depressing Closer, in which she held her own against equally beautiful and admirable Julia Roberts), she may be one of those rare people who's very existence makes it easier to believe in what she says. She makes it easier to hope that, in some cases at least, the two do go hand in hand.