SuperStamp, Downsizing, Adjusting Mistakes, the Art of Doing Nothing and Other Great Myths?

I wrote a post about seeing the movie 'Downsizing' yesterday -

Paranormal Podcast 516: What Happens After We Die?
And I nearly made a huge mistake when writing that post and I had to readjust the post, because I had mistakenly thought it was Terence Stamp who played the boat captain in that movie, but it was actually the similar looking actor (to my eyes anyway) Udo Kier.

Luckily for me that before I hit the publish button, I checked through the IMDB cast list at the movie's page and couldn't find Terence Stamp's name on it.

I was actually glad it wasn't Terence in that movie after-all, because I was worried for his health when I noticed his eyes were bulging out of his head a lot more as he was ageing.

Terence did star with Matt Damon in the movie 'The Adjustment Bureau' though, which was based on a PKD story.

Anyway, I had recently read the above article in a 2016 'Mind Body Spirit' magazine I had bought back in 2016, where Terence is interviewed about his life and book 'Rare Stamps: Reflections on Living, Breathing and Acting'.  
It also states in that article that Terence has been a patron of Watkins bookstore for many years.

Watkins Books are the publishers of 'Mind Body Spirit' magazine, the same magazine behind the annual top 100 list of spiritual teachers.

Terence Stamp didn't make the top 100 list in 2016, but there is a lady on that list named Elizabeth Gilbert, who made the #16th spot on that list and whose book I happen to be reading right now.

It's a book I thought I would never read, as I saw the movie made from the book twice, once when I was still married, and I hated it and a few weeks ago as a divorced guy and I hated it more.

There were certain things in the movie I liked, but overall, the elephant in the room was the "happy ever after" romantic angle that bugged me.

The only reason I decided to read 'Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia' was because I met Mark Holden at the Byron Writers Festival this year and bought and read his book 'My Idol Years'.

Another book that I would never have seen myself reading earlier this year before the festival.

Mark was a big fan of Carl Jung and we had a big chat about Jung and synchronicity and he told me about a line from the book 'Eat, Pray, Love' that inspired him when he first got thyroid cancer. 
That line was "bel far niente", which basically means to do nothing beautifully.

I started reading 'Eat, Pray, Love' on Friday and as you can see I'm not that far into it, but it already explains things a little better than the movie does.

Now, I had only watched the movie the second time a month or two ago and I wondered how that second marriage of Elizabeth's was going, so I Googled around and found out it was over and that she was now in a same sex partnership.

That was a curve ball I didn't see coming to be honest.
I found a pod-cast series that Elizabeth Gilbert had based around her current book 'Big Magic' called 'Magic Lessons' where she interviews and gives encouragement to various guests.
I noticed on the show's menu that the last podcast was launched on my birthday of September 23rd, 2016 called 'Show Up Before You are Ready' and that the second last podcast was released on the day of my father's cremation/funeral of September 16th, 2016 and called 'Leap into the Fire'(?!).

Looks like the universe has a very morbid sense of humour when it comes to handing out personal synchronicities to me.
So, I loaded all of the podcasts onto my iPad and binged listened to them over a few days while working around the house.

Terence Stamp as Odin

I was listening again to the last podcast of September 23rd, 2016, at 'Magic Lessons' while reading up about Terence Stamp last night and a commercial came on about Stamps.com at around the 26th minute of the podcast ... hmm ... stamps/Stamp?

So, I took that as a sign to look for video interviews with Terence Stamp and found the bookshop talk above of Terence talking about his life and acting career and at about the 30th minute of that talk he reveals that the secret of his acting was to have an empty head and "do nothing".

Which brings everything back full circle to the line that inspired Mark "bel far niente", which in turn inspired me to pick up a copy of 'Eat, Pray, Love' and start reading it on Friday.

The passage about 'Eat, Pray, Love' in mark's book

As soon as I had finished watching Terence's talk I Googled up to see what Elizabeth was up to right now and found this sad news below.

Elizabeth's partner had passed away on Friday.
Rayya Elias, the partner of Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, has died.

Life isn't all smooth sailing and sometimes there is nothing we can do about it, but it all seems to be connected in ways that we can't imagine though.