I’ve had a simmering love/hate relationship with Oprah for quite some time now. It seems just when I’ve surrendered to her wisdom and inspiration she does something so cloying and narcissistic I have to take a break from her. Can’t help it.
I’m sort of her anti-fan. I don’t want to love her. But sometimes I just do. Other times she makes me want to put my fist through something. (Oh my God. I think I’ve just described in complete eloquence how I feel about every single Kardashian.) I digress.
I was watching in 1996 when Oprah introduced her very first book club selection, Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean. I remember being riveted and bought the book the very next day. It shattered me, and stayed with me for a long time, for I had two toddlers at the time.
I haven’t read another selection since. I never again wanted to give Oprah (a non-mother of toddlers) credit for evoking that level of emotion in me. Smelled like media voodoo to me. So I found my own books from then on.
And, after ignoring the frantic fanfare and global countdown that began in September, I did find myself lingering at the television during her final week of broadcasts this past May. Honestly, it was really quite something. Naturally I started to warm to her again.
Every few years I order subscriptions to her wildly popular O Magazine when a school fundraiser allows me to practically steal it from the publisher at two bucks an issue. (Plus, it takes a pretty big person to finally admit they are not actually reading the Newsweeks in the bathroom and an even bigger person to admit they really don’t possess the friends that would be impressed by that anyway.)
So I recently gave the big O another chance to reel me in.
The first issue arrived and I almost choked: wouldn’t you know it, there was not one, not two, not even five images of the world’s most famous figure on it but nine. Count ‘em. Nine Oprah Winfreys on the very first cover of the very first magazine I’d conceded to in about five years. Was she kidding me? Good lawd. How was I supposed to rekindle my love for her when right out the gate she was forcing me to eyeroll?
So there I was, schlepping this magazine around, cursing it and bitterly remembering every letter of rejection her Articles Editor had sent my way over the years. In time the next issue came. And then the next. They began piling up at such an alarming rate I started begrudgingly skimming through them.
Ahhh, my Oprah…..(is that background music?)
I’ve really got to hand it to her: much of what she puts into the glossy pages of her magazine is very uplifting. Now, I don’t rip out pages and stick them on my fridge ala Stuart Smalley and his daily affirmations but I do rather appreciate how she goes out of her way to include all the little people — usually inserting up to four exclamation points when one of her eagle-eyed beauty editors finds a navy peacoat for $35 (!!!!). You know, like it’s hard.
It’s not a guilty pleasure like my Kardashians but enjoyable all the same. That Dr. Phil is a bit of a drama queen but I’d rather read his written word than hear his aNNOYing drawl. And alas, while I admire her spunk, without hesitation I flip right past Suze Orman’s finance column (because really…there is nothing that brilliant mind can do for me at this point).
So it seems my Harpo Pendulum is swinging onto my positive side of late and I’m trying to live my best life and find my greatest passion and be the pinnacle of personal perfection that she KNOWS I am capable of.
I don’t want to brag, but I think I’m slowly getting there. Just this week alone I phoned a friend I had dropped like a hot potato a long time ago and apologized for … dropping her like a hot potato. Oprah’s 12 Step Program? Perhaps.
I also – as per Oprah’s suggestion – relied on my inner peace and refrained from ripping my daughter’s hair out by the roots when, in a nanosecond of teen fury, she turned on her heels and spat a swear word in my direction under her breath. (That’s a lie. It had nothing to do with peace. It had everything to do with the ability to suspend I-phone service with a couple of clicks from my cell phone). Technology rocks.
I haven’t been meditating and I’m certainly not exercising (come on….she’s not Ghandi….) but I just might be able to take some of her preaching to heart. I’m going to stick to doing what I love at all costs and find time to do it whenever I can.
That basically means more blogs. I think I can I think I can I think I can.