Several weeks ago, I watched the final challenge of Top Chef Masters. In essence, the challenge was for each chef to bare their depth of their own personal humanity (i.e., bear their sole) on a plate, that is each Chef had to write four letters and translate them into a four-course meal. The first course was a love letter; second course, an apology letter; third course, a thank-you letter, and fourth course, a letter to themselves. It was a tremendous challenge, highly emotional.
Being that I am past the half-way mark of a one year blog myself, am in a medical situation myself and having read the personal tribute Actress Lynn Chen’s wrote of her father on The Actor’s Diet, I felt propelled by the Top Chef Masters episode … but in a new way.
My idea is this, what if we all literally wrote the same four letters? What if we sat down and write something extremely deep, bearing our soul for all? Could we do it? Would we do it? Think about it, when was the last time any one of us wrote a letter? Emails, text messages and voice overs don’t count. This is a real letter, one made by hand, written from deep thought, each word, with meaning and heart? Unless one has been in some interpersonal skills class, I am willing to bet most have never done that before.
In truth, I have no clue where I am going with this. But more so, for some unknown reason, I feel compelled to do this. Thus, I am giving my permission to bear my soul to all the world and see what happens.
I guess hope that whether or your personal letters are taken somewhere, to someone or mailed to yourself, is simply not for me to know. But even though I will post these four letters online, I will seal each in an envelope for mailing or reading at some later date. When this blog ends, someone, or even me can rediscover my true feelings somewhere down the road.
I will try for my first letter tomorrow: Love.