I promise there isn’t a theme here.

A couple weeks into being 29 and I still have yet to go commando (pats self on back).

Funny how a single word* (“penthouse”) can spiral into a long reflection about the film Pretty Woman and the marvelous things it taught me in second grade. Mind you, this was also the year I was so lovingly and perhaps equally inappropriately introduced to Adam Sandler as Billy Madison.

As we so often do, my roommate and I were leaning on opposite counters of our kitchen, chatting while baking. Turns out I wasn’t the only one watching Pretty Woman at age eight and who thought Vivian played by Julia Roberts pulled out lollipops from her knee-high pleather boot. They were condoms, folks. Of all the great one-liners that movie had/has me quoting, the best remains (and to this I bring back the age of innocence)…

Well, color me happy, there’s a sofa in here for two!

Without further ado…some of the many things Pretty Woman taught me:

1. Prince. And how his songs perfectly pair with a bubble bath and a yellow cassette (yes, I said cassette) player.
2. That Richard Gere was and is a dreamboat. While most girls my age were crushing on some blonde-hair-blue-eyed hunk of a man, I was all about the classy fella, mild toned, salt-and-pepper-silver-fox Richard Gere.
3. Your foot is as long as the distance between your elbow and your wrist. If you haven’t tried it yet (seriously?!), do it, now. Cool, right?
4. Vivian is an awesome name.
5. Beverly Hill girls be bitches.
6. Strawberries and champagne will always be romantic.
7. Being afraid of heights is sexy if you’re Richard Gere.
8. Robes are always a good idea.
9. Chivalry isn’t dead.
10. Screw runways, fashion runs rampant at horse races. Often in the form of a brown and ivory polka-dot dress, just sayin’
11. When it comes to silverware etiquette, start from the outside and work your way in.
12. Careful, those jewelry boxes are no joke.

Not get all mushy here and read way more into the plot 20 years post first-viewing but here’s the thing – we are not defined by one thing, occupation, type, category. We can be many things and all of them come together in unique quantities to form who we uniquely are.

In yoga today, one of my favorite teachers talked about how it’s our ego that drives self-given titles, classifications of “us” that keep us trapped in a box in which we use to contain our beliefs and therefore our potential. Something’s scary? We tell ourselves it’s because that’s not “who I am”, “I don’t do that”, that’s not “me”.  Well what’s to say we can’t be scared of something and do it anyway because that’s also who we are? We are scared but we’re also brave, uncertain but also never never so sure of anything in our entire life.

Richard Gere’s character, Edward, is terrified of heights and in a great gesture of his love and defiance of fear, climbs a fire escape to Vivian. Vivian, despite her promiscuous career, and rules (no kissing on the mouth), allows herself to fall in love with Edward.

Now this isn’t to say that you should not have boundaries out of self-respect in a knowing-oneself way. There is absolutely a time and a place for when it’s necessary to honor what you stand for and what you don’t. It really then becomes a question of are my beliefs about myself serving me?

If they are not, set them free. It’s a process, but at least when I notice a pattern of my own, I’m able to assess it in the moment telling myself Okay, this is how I handle things. Is it serving me or is it holding me back? Am I choosing to keep this pattern because it genuinely works? Or right here, right now, do I choose something different?

Maybe that’s what Vivian was doing when Edward asked her “What is your name?” to which she replied that infamous “What do you want it to be?” She was leaving herself open to be re-created. (Yeah this was probably Seductress Technique 101 but in the spirit of making a connection, let me have this one.)

All I’m saying is, wherever we come from, we have the ability at every moment to choose where we want to go. Let go of judgement, of what we tell ourselves, the stories that get in the way of who we want to become. We’ve got those stories, sure – but how do you want to tell Right Now’s story? What do you want this chapter to be about without a title and without knowing exactly how it will end? That’s the fun part.

The story is just getting good.

*Thanks, AG, for the challenge to write a post about my reflections on a film featuring a silver fox and a prostitute. I think it’s safe to say “challenge accepted” and keep ’em coming.