Inspirations from Julie and Julia

Since Washington D.C. got slammed with 2 feet of snow this weekend, most residents have been snowed in for a few days. I can't complain, because it's actually been quite a lovely weekend, giving us the chance to stop running around at the typical D.C. frenetic pace and enjoy the company of dear friends that live close enough to walk to. We've enjoyed board games, cooked delicious meals, danced and listened to music, and just enjoyed being together. While the blustery snowfall continued outside, we have also watched several movies, a perfect snowstorm pastime. Although I enjoyed all of the films that we watched, the movie Julia and Julie that we watched last night was particularly inspiring.

Several of my friends had told me about this movie and how much they enjoyed it. I have to say, I was not disappointed! Julie and Julia is a delightful story which juxtaposes the cooking adventures of Julia Child in her early years of cooking, and the adventures of Julie, a cooking enthusiast in Manhattan fifty years later who decides to cook her way through Julia Child's cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." The movie follows the ambitious cooking projects of Julie and Julia; it follows Julie as she attends the esteemed French cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu, and then embarks with two fellow cooking enthusiasts on writing a cookbook for American women on the art of French cooking. Julia, meanwhile, loves cooking as a creative outlet to her stressful and monotonous job, and through the suggestion of her husband Eric, decides to start a cooking blog in which she will blog about cooking each of the 524recipes in Julia Child's cookbook, a feat which she vows to accomplish in just one year.




There were several aspects of this story which were very inspiring to me. First of all, I found it very inspiring the way that both Julie and Julia took their circumstances of boredom, restlessness, and free time, and channeled their energies invest in their passion: cooking. Julie was trying to figure out what she would do while she and her husband were stationed in Paris for his job. She could have simply sought to get a typical administrative job working for the government, but instead she choose to enter the new territory of the professional cooking world. She didn't choose what was neccesarily simple or routine, but choose to invest her time and heart in one of the aspects of life which brought her much joy - cooking, nourishing, delicious food, and sharing it with those she loved.

Similarly, Julia was able to embrace on her ambitious cooking project as a way to bring color, joy, and new direction to what was currently a stagnant, and sometimes disapointing routine. As an aspiring writer, she had previously gotten turned down by publishers on her manuscript, and was discouraged about not being able to have ever landed a publishing deal. Yet it was partly beacuse of this unfulfilled dream that she had the desire to resume writing again and to begin a project that she felt she could successfully finish. And in the process of her cooking blog and cooking adventures, she was able to combine her passions of writing and cooking, and fulfill her dreams.

Another aspect that really touched me about this movie was the relationship of Julie Child and her husband Paul, and Julia and her husband Eric. Both husbands were extremely supportive of their wives' endeavors, encouraging them, affirming them, laughing with them, and being there to pick up the pieces when their wives' dreams seemed to be falling apart. And the beauty of Julie and Julia's love for cooking was not only that it brought themselves joy, but that it was an oportunity for them to bring joy through learning about, buying, preparing, cooking, and serving delicious food to their husbands. Although Julie definitely hit some bumps in the road and had to learn the hard way that in the end her husband was more important that her goals in themselves, it is inspiring to see her realize this discover the importance of her marriage anew.
Through sharing their passions, Julie and Julia are able to offer a gift of themselves to the ones they love in a unique, creative way.

So, the moral of the story for me was that there is always time to follow your dreams, always time to nurture ambition and new goals. Sometimes these goals are intertwined in your 9-5pm job, but often times, they are not. But this story reminded me that in that space where we do have room to shape our activities, be it on the weeknights, weekends, or even our lunch breaks, there is a chance for creativity to unfold, and a chance for us to follow our dreams unabashedly. It just takes a little ambition, a little courage and a little unconventionality to turn those things which bring us great joy into a dream undertaken and fulfilled.