More than wishes – Photo: L. Weikel
Power of Intention
I think most of us are at least tangentially familiar with the concept of setting intentions in order to accomplish goals or manifest the reality we want to experience. If you’ve read a bunch of my posts, you know I tend to harp on the importance of setting intentions at particularly auspicious times of the month and year. And if you’re familiar with shamanic journeying, you know it’s important (essential in my opinion) to always have an intention before setting out to visit other realms. The power of intention has the capacity to yield astonishing results in our lives.
The truth of this was dramatically borne out in a movie we watched recently. King Richard is about Richard Williams, the father of tennis greats Venus and Serena Williams. Will Smith plays the girls’ father and it’s obvious why he there’s a lot of Oscar buzz around his performance.
Even if you’re not ‘into’ tennis, it’s unlikely you’ve never heard of Venus and Serena. Not only are they each phenomenal in their own right, the fact that they are sisters and they’ve both dominated the sport for years, is downright spectacular.
Having a Plan
Especially when Venus and Serena were just breaking onto the tennis scene, I remember reading or hearing about their father being ‘difficult.’ At least that’s how I remember it being spun. I remember wondering, vaguely, if he was one of those weird ‘stage fathers’ who browbeats their kids and makes life miserable for them all in the pursuit of dominance in the sport.
To be honest, I didn’t really care all that much one way or another. We only watched tennis matches when visiting my sister Jane on the 4th of July. Wimbledon was on the menu every single year, along with lobster and corn on the cob. But watching them play through the years – wow. It was obvious they were incredible athletes. And their behavior off-court was equally impressive. I don’t remember ever seeing them misbehave or act out like the John McEnroes of tennis.
Perhaps because my interest in their story was tangential at best, I had no idea how they came to be who they are. And believe me, their father was the man with the plan – he set the initial intention that created the opportunities his daughters capitalized on through hard work and sheer talent and intuition. (And not an insignificant amount of intention setting on their own part, too.)
Family
What I think I loved most about this movie – beyond the gobsmacking tenacity of the father and talent of the girls – was the way their whole family was so loving and supportive of each other. As trite as these qualities have become through overhyping in the media (often by those who don’t live them), love, respect, and integrity honestly seem to be core values of the Williams family.
And lest you think it was all ‘King Richard’ who made it happen, I beg to differ. No, this was most definitely a collaborative effort of both parents and the three older sisters, too.
It was amazing to watch how perilously close things came – at least a couple of times – to a totally different destiny playing out for the entire family. I have to wonder if at least some of the ‘luck’ was a function of the power of the intention set by Richard Williams himself (and which obviously ‘rubbed off’ on his girls).
King Richard is streaming on HBO Max right now. It looks like it’ll only be available on that venue for another seven or eight days. (I’m not sure how that works or why that’s the case.) If you want to be inspired by greatness and perhaps moved to hone your own power of intention, watch this movie.
(T+3)