In this video, speaker and author, Ganel-Lyn Condie, compares life to the Yellow Brick Road and Emerald City of OZ. Life is more about the journey (or the Yellow Brick Road) than our destinations (or OZ).
Read more from author, Ganel-Lyn Condie.
Transcript of Life Is About the Yellow Brick Road:
I love the movie “The Wizard of Oz.” Honestly, though, like, as a child, the monkeys scared me. I had nightmares about that. And I would beg my mom, “Please let me watch it again.” And she’d be like: “You’re going to have nightmares.” And I’m like, “No, no, no. It’s okay!”
But I like to think of “Wizard of Oz” as an analogy for my life. If we took out of “The Wizard of Oz” the whole Yellow Brick Road part, there would be a very short movie. It would be, you know, a house and the Emerald City and none of the in-between, which is really the reason we love it, right? It’s the Munchkins, and it’s the Cowardly Lion, and it’s finding the Scarecrow, and it’s even the Flying Monkeys. In life, often, we want to take out all that middle stuff, right?
The Wizard of Oz and Life
“The Wizard of Oz” and life is really only about the Yellow Brick Road. It wasn’t ever going to be about the Emerald City. Even though, through the whole movie you see Dorothy and she’s determined, like, THAT’S what it’s all about and we can get distracted that way in our lives. It can be about that promotion or if, you know, I write the next bestseller, or if my kids, you know, make it this way—that somehow, it’s the journey that isn’t mattering at all, it’s that we get to the Emerald City and somehow if we get there we’re going to be relieved.
Well, we know from Dorothy’s story, right? The whole point was that journey—it was falling asleep in that poppy field, it was sometimes taking a wrong turn—because along that way she met the Cowardly Lion, she met the Tin Man, she met the Scarecrow and that process allowed her to come home. And it wasn’t the Emerald City. It was always about that journey.
And so, as we deal with making decisions, and messing up, and taking wrong turns, and struggling in relationships, it’s key that we breathe through the Yellow Brick Road part, because that’s really why, I think, at the end of our journey, when we get to that Emerald City, it will feel like home because we’ve had that experience.
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