Chewbacca Mom Reality

      So, The Chewbacca Mom:  do you love her, loathe her, or have no idea what the heck I'm talking about?
       If you are among the - some would say fortunate - three or four people who have not yet heard of The Chewbacca Mom, I'll take it upon myself to now divest you of your mayhaps blissful unawareness: 
     In brief, The Chewbacca Mom is a jolly young mom of two who went into Kohl's and bought herself a Chewbacca mask (if you don't know who Chewbacca is, go see Star Wars)  then came back out to her car where she  made a video of herself ceremoniously putting  on the mask then breaking into paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter punctuated by declamations of joy and delight. She posted the video on her Facebook page last Thursday and by Monday it had gone viral; received over 133 million views, the most Facebook views ever on a live video; spawned half-a dozen spin-off videos including an awesome Songify  musical number; and she was an over-night - or rather, over-weekend - star.  The laughing Chewbacca Mom has already appeared on Good Morning America, ET and a few other talk venues.  And she and her video have polarized people into two vociferous camps:  those who think she's the blessed answer to our nation's general malaise and those in whom she induces the gag reflex.
      But your really have to see the Chewbacca Mom video for yourself, so if you haven't yet, here's the link:

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X26FuAlnnWY 
    
       And if you've already seen the original, then you really have to see the Songify version:
     
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAFhtY_wHyY 

      As for me, I'm on team Chewbacca Mom. 
      In fact my initial reaction to the video was a wish that I could be like the Chewbacca Mom.  That good-natured.  That cheerful. That ebullient.  That playful.  That trusting that it was all right and perfectly acceptable to do something like making a silly video about some silly thing that made me happy.  The product of formative experiences that taught that such whimsy actually was all right and acceptable.  No fear.  "No shame, it's all love,"  as she says in her video, and subsequently much satisfaction, which is, of course, what we all want, but of which many of us feel that we can't get none.
     But not the Chewbacca Mom.
     I expect this young woman was  blessed at conception with  some happy gene that rules her outlook on life and that she'll pass on to her children. 
     And yet it doesn't appear that her sunny disposition is the product of a life freer from care, discouragement, and unfulfilled longing than the rest of us have.
    In interviews on Good Morning America and ET the overweight, arm-tattooed Mom shares that she wants to start working out but hasn't had much success.  That she's tried out twice and been rejected twice from "The Voice".  That her 7-year-old daughter came home from school and beamed that because of her mom's new-found media fame she's now really popular among her classmates.  Which suggests that she wasn't particularly before.  As a mother who's had children in the elementary school in-, out-, and in-between crowds, I can attest that we mothers not only feel our children's peer-group-induced pain, but that a child's social popularity or lack thereof trickles up  to the child's parents as well. 
     So the  Chewbacca Mom obviously faces the same travails as the rest of us, maybe more than some of us.  She lives in the same troubled, turbulent world.  But  she does have an advantage over some of us:  She knows how to find her bliss and it's never far off:  Her children.  Her husband.  A funny Chewbacca mask.  
     One of the premises of the film on Quantum Physics called "What The  #$*!  Do We Know?"  is that we create our own reality to a degree; that someone with a negative or victimized outlook on life will be the victim of of events that will reinforce that outlook, whereas someone with a bright, positive outlook will enjoy more positive outcomes.
      Chewbacca Mom, take me away.

     Reference:
    "Chewbacca Mask Mom Candace Payne, Live On GMA" , ohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho7bQfBos6w

http://www.etonline.com/news/189384_exclusive_chewbacca_mom_reveals_she_tried_out_for_the_voice_twice/