Nora Ephron On Owning Your Path, Your Past, And Your Present

Here’s Nora Ephron on owning your path, your past, and your present:

My religion is “Get over it.” And I was raised in that religion. That was the religion of my home — my mother saying, “Everything is copy; everything is material; someday you will think this is funny.” My parents never said, “oh you poor thing.” It was work through it, get to the other side, turn it into something. And it worked with me.

Looking deeper into being able to laugh at yourself and the importance of agency in humor she said, 

My mother taught me a very fundamental lesson of humor, which is that if you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you, but if you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your joke. And you’re the hero of the joke because you’re telling the story.

Life happens. We can only own our story. Not even when we think we know someone else’s. Not even when we know they are so wrong and we are soooooo right. 

So whatever sucked, get over it. Have a laugh and keep pressing forward.  

Want more? Check out “Nora Ephron: Aging Gratefully” on NPR. 

Ps. Meryl Streep reading Ephon’s book Heartburn on Audible is my favorite recorded book ever.