It’s tricky how your mindset can affect your reality – how you interpret things. It can be for your own good, but it can also blur your view of possibilities. It can even affect your physical reality. And in my case, I wasn’t able to recognize this movie star properly. Or at least to approach him with a clear mind, so that I could have interacted differently.

Deceiving

As a journalist I have met some Hollywood actors. Like Hugh Grant, Michiel Huisman, and one of my favorites: Renée Zellweger. And since I have seen quite some movies with them, I say – without a doubt – that I would recognize them easily, if they stood in front of me again. But that can be deceiving. As I will show you in the following anecdote.

Kinda Odd

It was Queen’s Day in The Netherlands (2005), and everybody was outrageously celebrating in the streets of Amsterdam, wearing the national colour – orange – abundantly. And my then girlfriend and I went out as well, as we always did on Queen’s Day. In fact, she loved buying second hand clothes on those days. So we went to the picturesque streets of the Jordaan, and we got to this square called the Northern Market, because we had had a great time there the previous year.

But this time the square was pretty much empty. No cheering people, no events where people could sing karaoke or buy the coolest second hand shoes from some girl. Just a dozen people were selling their used stuff, and very close to the road, in order to be able to showcase their merchandise easily. So it was kinda odd to detect these two people further away, standing with their rug and second hand stuff pretty much isolated from all the people on the square and the other streets. But somehow I felt drawn to them.

Being Outgoing

So I told my girlfriend to have a closer look at those people, a guy and a girl, to check them and their merchandise out. She agreed, but in a way she had rather stayed near the road, because there were simply more things to look at.

When we walked into this duo’s direction, I got a better look at the guy and I told my girlfriend that he looked like Brad Pitt. She wasn’t as impressed as I was, but she thought so as well – while she was looking a bit behind her, still more interested in the bunch of people over there. I got closer to the guy, and because of the resemblance I told him in Dutch: “Hey, man. You know, you really look like Brad Pitt.” Just being outgoing, friendly, giving him a compliment.

But instead of a big smile, some laughter and a tap on my shoulder, or a simple “thank you, man” for the compliment, the guy just looked back at me. Didn’t say anything, he only frowned at me. As you can imagine, it was the least I had expected.

So there I stood, pretty much staring at the guy, scanning his features. While my head was commenting the scene, rambling about the guy. “Well, he does have these typical bushy eyebrows, sharp and pointing down, like the actor’s.” “And look at those jaw lines. Exactly like Brad’s, with the matching goatee (beard).” I even thought, while looking into his blue eyes: “Well, if it was Brad Pitt, he actually looked as handsome as on the big screen.” Yet, at the same time my mind told me: “But it couldn’t be him. Not in Amsterdam, not at the Northern Market, not on Queen’s Day, not with his lady friend, who was selling stuff on a rug.”

Flabbergasted

Still flabbergasted by his odd reaction, I turned to his friend; a woman with long, brown hair. She reacted more welcoming. Well, at least she said “Hi” back, and she smiled friendly to me. So I gave her my flyer – since I had written a novel back then – and I also told her that her friend looked like Brad Pitt. Yet she reacted weirdly as well to my comment; not in a way I was expecting at all: smiling, but definitely forced, even a bit sour, nodding a bit, and staying silent. Dead silent. Like she was thinking: “Uh huh, and could you please go now?” It was so surreal. I mean, it was Queen’s Day – people were outgoing, smiling, and total strangers would talk and cheer with each other. But not these people, even after giving such a compliment to him – and technically to her, if he was her boyfriend.

When we had left, I let it all sink in for some while. And after joining the crowd again, and being in the proper celebration mood, I said to my girlfriend: “You know, maybe it was Brad Pitt indeed. And he just didn’t want to be recognized.” And she was on the same page. At least she thought the whole situation was odd as well.

Mindset

Unless I met him someday again, I would never know for sure if it was Brad Pitt – on a day I would never expect him to be in Amsterdam, at a place where I would never expect him to be. And that’s the whole point: I had a different mindset, a different set of beliefs, which wouldn’t allow the presence of Brad Pitt in Amsterdam, on Queen’s Day, with a friend (or girlfriend) who was selling stuff on a rug, at the Northern Market. Hence my different interpretation. Everything told me it was him, but my mind kept telling me: “It can’t be him.” Somehow my beliefs needed to remain intact, in existence, otherwise my mind would have been lost.

Côte d’Azur

Different story. Less Hollywood, but somehow connected to the premise of my story, so I believe. When I was a teenager I went on a holiday to the South of France, the Côte d’Azur. Together with my sisters, the boyfriend of one my sisters, and his mother. And even though my other sister had a boyfriend as well, he didn’t join us, because he couldn’t make it – due to his studies, as far as I recall. But he would visit my sister for a couple of days, with a friend, so that he could join us at least for a little while.

I was fond of both my brothers-in-law – like our whole family was – and my sister and her boyfriend (the one who visited us) were a lovely couple. Great together, and looking great together. So when my sister sat on her boyfriend’s lap, it shouldn’t have been a big surprise – in fact, it was the most natural thing to do for them. But I remember that I thought: “Weird, that they are acting in such a manner. They are not together anymore. They have broken up, right?”

Back then these thoughts just crossed my mind, and they disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, back to my subconscious. And we just continued enjoying our trip, together with him and the friend who accompanied him. My mind knew they were a couple, but apparently my subconscious thought differently.

Feeling Sorry

A year later they actually broke up, after ten years, and my whole family was devasted – sad because of losing such a great son-in-law, and feeling sorry for my sister that she had lost her loving relationship. Well, we didn’t know all the ins and outs, but it appeared to be a loving relationship, and they stayed friends from then onwards. In fact, till the present day they are still in contact with each other.

The reason why I wanted to bring up this anecdote, was because this time I was apparently able to listen to my intuition, my inner voice. My mind told me: everything is fine, they are still in a relationship. In fact, they were behaving like a couple, showing their affection to each other by sitting so close to each other. Yet my inner voice told me something else. And just to show you how your (rational) mindset can cover these things up: it took decades for these thoughts, by my inner voice, to come up again, and to ask my sister whether they had actually broken up back then – or were toying with this idea – even though they didn’t tell anything. But my sister negated it: back then they were still a couple, and the idea of breaking up hadn’t even come up then.

Tricky

So your mindset can be tricky – as mentioned in the beginning. It could make you look differently at things, even if some elements are cristal clear, or your intuition tells you differently. Then again, it could help you to create things – or attract things – simply because your beliefs attract certain situations. And the latter is relevant to the last part of my story.

Thing is, the anecdote about Brad Pitt actually had a pre-quel. Five years before my encounter, my other sister had a similar experience. Invited by a befriended professional football player from Italy (due to her husband’s work), she and her family travelled to Miami to have some holidays. And they stayed at one of the most exclusive hotels in Miami South Beach: Delano Miami – as part of the renowned Delano Hotels.

So one day she went to the private beach area, alone, and when she walked back on the sandy boardwalk, this guy in swimming trunks just crossed her to return to the Delano Hotel as well. The doorman of the hotel’s beach side immediately welcomed this guy, and my sister just thought: hey, he looks familiar. But she couldn’t remember where she knew him from. When she got to the doorman, he asked her politely if she could show her bracelet as token of being a hotel guest. Hence she showed it to him, but at the same time she wondered: “So why didn’t he ask this guy in front of me for the same bracelet? Odd…” And almost at the same time the following thought came up: “Wait, it was Brad Pitt!” So she started to walk a bit quicker, in order to catch up with him, but by the time she arrived at the corner where he had turned around, the actor had already disappeared.

The Playful Universe

I had to laugh hard when my sister told me the story. I thought: how could you not recognize Brad Pitt when he was practically standing in front of you? So I told myself, totally convinced: if Brad Pitt ever stood in front of me, I would recognize him for sure. No doubt about it.

Guess the Universe likes to play with you sometimes. Call it karma, or call it the power of your own words. Also, in a way, it showed me how tricky the mind can be. How mindsets can influence the things you observe. And not sure if it was just a funny coincidence, on top of both anecdotes, but my sister who had broken up with her then boyfriend (so not the one who went to Miami), gave birth to a little boy in between these two encounters with Brad Pitt – time-wise practically halfway. In Amsterdam, in a street called “Northern Side”, and she named her son: Delano. And no, it’s not Brad’s – as far as we know.