Finding the stage where we can be our true selves

​The boys are off on their own adventure this week, so I decided to do something without them yesterday I never would have done with them. I went to see the movie Elvis.

I've never been an Elvis fan. I've never NOT liked Elvis, I guess I was just never introduced to him. Until yesterday.

I know all movies about people's lives take a lot of creative liberties when telling their stories. So I didn't take everything I saw as fact. But there was one scene that was so powerful - it had me tearing up - that I had to come home and fact check it.

There was a television special Elvis was supposed to be a part of. But he was slated to sing songs he wasn't comfortable singing. At the same time, Elvis was wrestling with the assasination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

At one point, he says to the producers, when I don't know what to say, I sing....

So instead of singing the songs he was feeling pressured to sing, Elvis sang "If I Can Dream" in front of a national television audience. You could feel the emotion in his voice. You could feel it in the live audience - he was singing what so many wanted to say.

The movie moment moved me as much as a movie moment can. (I'll link the performance in the comments).

I think a large part of that was I could 'get' Elvis in that moment. I'm a lot like that some days - I don't know what to say - but instead of singing, I write.

At the end of the movie, the movie's protagonist Colonel Parker says, I didn't kill Elvis, love did.

In large part, he was referring to his love of singing, especially singing songs like "If I Can Dream" - where he could pour out the love he often kept trapped inside.

The movie demonstrated in a clear way that the stage was where Elvis felt most himself - it was where he gave himself permission to most BE himself. And that is where he impacted lives in a way that lives on to this day.

For all of us, life really is about finding that place where we can most be ourselves. Where we have permission to.

It is where we will make the biggest difference. In ourselves. And in the world around us.