This weekend holds the annual television extravaganza known as the Oscar awards, and you can bet your money that I’ll be solidly ensconced on my living-room couch for every last minute of it. I am a movie lover from way back; I wrote Judith Crist as a ninth-grader asking for advice on being a film critic, wrote movie reviews for my high-school newspaper, and interviewed Steven Spielberg—who had just hit the big time with the Time magazine cover story heralding Jaws—as a 16-year-old student (this says as much about Steven Spielberg and his generosity of spirit as it does about me). For me, movies often hold clues to what it means to live a New Story, and I find myself combing through them for insights and reflections about life.

Last year, I saw a movie that still haunts me and which I highly recommend: Whale Rider. Filmed in New Zealand, the story follows a young Maori girl whose heart is full of spirit, conviction, and love for her grandfather and the ways of her ancestors. Fresh, funny, compelling and deeply moving, Whale Rider is a story that epitomizes the process of living one’s New Story; indeed, the tagline for the movie is “One young girl dared to confront the past, change the present and determine the future.”

Films can motivate us to do that—to examine where we need to confront the past, change the present, and determine our future. Like the girl depicted in Whale Rider (beautifully portrayed by Keisha Castle-Hughes, who is the youngest-ever nominated female for Best Actress), we can look with clarity and courage at the course our life is taking—and make conscious decisions about whether or not to continue down that path.

But there’s an even more compelling line that comes from last year’s film roster, and that’s an injunction spoken in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In it, the king of one realm says to another, “Become what you were born to be.” That is the clarion call to the king or queen within us all. That is the appeal to the heroic spirit that resides in each of us, which is expressed when we make the choice to live a new kind of story—a New Story—with the time we have. Ready? Set? Action!

This week I had the pleasure of having lunch with some of my “East Coast relatives”—my father’s sister, and one of her six children, and his son. Because I don’t often get to see that side of my family, the occasion was particularly enjoyable—and I realized later that the day we had lunch was the 13th anniversary of my father’s death, who was definitely with us in spirit.

During the course of lunch, the subject turned to—well, actually I was responsible for turning the subject to—politics, as both my aunt and cousin live in Vermont, and I wanted to get their opinions of presidential candidate Howard Dean. My 81-year-old aunt, who is petite and pretty and reflects her Swedish heritage, feels very positive about him, and went on to quiz my brother and me about how we felt about the upcoming Democratic primaries and the recent gubernatorial race in California.

Then quietly, and unassumingly, my aunt mentioned that after she graduated from Smith (also my alma mater) in 1943, she moved to Montgomery, Alabama, for a short time. She told the story of being so upset at the enforced segregation that constantly surrounded her, she decided to make a silent, yet deafening, protest. One day in 1944, upon entering a bus, she made her way deliberately to a seat…in the very back.

What a wonderful story—a New Story! And, hearing it, how proud I was to know my aunt—prouder still to be related to her. Eleven years before Rosa Parks made her historic and courageous decision, my aunt had made the same point from the opposite side of the bus—that we are all equal.

This inspiring example illustrates the power of a single, conscious choice—how deliberate action, even if just taken for the duration of a 15-minute bus ride—can spark the imagination and ignite the heart of anyone, and everyone, who hears the story. I will never forget this wonderful anecdote, told so casually by my beloved aunt.

What about you? What stories from your family history have illumined where you’ve come from—and where you want to go?