Whenever I finish a project I feel kind of lost for a short time. To fill the void, I usually try to reflect on what I have just done. I try to think what I can learn from my experience, what I did well and what I need to improve on. If I had a boss or director on a project, I usually ask them some of these questions, but often I just have to think it through on my own.
I know that I am harder on myself than anyone else, but I desperately try to really think it all through.
I take everything I do seriously. Whether it is a volunteer position or one I get paid for, I tend to tell myself that what I am doing is extremely important. Whatever position I have had, I try to buy into it completely, focusing on how it will affect others and what difference it could make in the world.
Whenever an actor signs on to a new project, one of the first things I feel is important is to buy into what we are about to do. If the story is set in a strange, made up land, we have to believe in that land. If the part we are playing is a fictional creature, we have to feel it is real for the time we are that character. We make it real by believing in it. (I am talking acting, not fake news!)
Sometimes that is difficult.
When I have failed to buy into the story I am a part of telling, I have failed miserably. If I don’t believe it, the audience surely won’t. As with most things, the lessons of theatre can apply to everyday life.
If you don’t believe in what you are doing, no one else will either. Even if your dream is 180 degrees away from what you are currently doing, not putting your whole heart into where you are right now not only isn’t good for you, it is limiting where you can go in the future.
What do I mean by that??
First off, if you can’t focus on and do your best at what you might consider a “menial” job, how able and prepared will you be when your dream comes along. Learning to give something your all and doing your best at every position is what will give you the drive and work ethic to succeed at everything you do.
But more than that, what if what you are doing right now is your preparation for your dream?
When I was young I worked at a bank. I love numbers and I love orderly things like balancing the numbers at the end of the day. What I really loved was talking to customers. I liked helping them. I really loved listening to their stories, their voices, seeing their mannerisms and hearing their experiences.
As a writer, I remember the things they said to me, as an actress I try to remember how they said it and why. Although I didn’t know it, I was learning and preparing for a dream I have yet to realize fully. I was gathering information and ideas for the future.
My niece studied to be a counselor. I believe she wanted to help people by listening to them and guiding them. She ended up working in corporate America doing something that is nowhere near what her dreams and degree suggested. When I asked her about where she found herself, she gave me some of the wisest words I’ve ever heard.
She told me that she loved her job and that she got to listen and counsel people everyday. She told me that she would use her gifts and talents wherever she was. Just because she wasn’t in an office that said counselor on the door, just because things didn’t look exactly as she had envisioned them, didn’t mean she wasn’t right where she was supposed to be and that what she had studied couldn’t still make a difference in someone’s life.
When she told me that, I remembered an old movie titled “Mr. Holland’s Opus”. It is about a guy who thought he was a failure because he spent his whole life at his “back up” job as a teacher. He kind of got trapped there as life happened around him. He never got to compose the symphony he had thought would be his life work. But when all of his current and former students gathered to play the instruments he had taught them to use, they made a symphony more gorgeous than he could have ever imagined.
John Lennon wrote “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” Each day will take you closer to where you are supposed to be, if you will only let it. It may not be where you thought you would be, it may not be where you think you are supposed to be, and if you want to see it in a negative light, it might not be where you want to be.
Each day the sun will come up and each evening it will set. Time will march on whether you like it or not.
Every time I called my mom in her last few years, all she could do was lament at being old. She wasted her days doing nothing and worrying about every ache and pain. She acted as if she were uniquely afflicted with getting older. She was not. I am not. You are not.
I have just finished leading a workshop and we performed a short play. At the end of the workshop play, I asked the kids while they were still onstage in front of the audience some questions about their experience with the show we did. That way the audience could see some of the process the kids used to develop their characters. Every time I asked one of my youngest students about his experience he would start his answer with “Let’s get serious now.” He got a laugh from the other kids so he kept saying it as kind of a joke.
I will say it now for real. Let’s get serious. Let’s learn to buy into what we are doing. If we just can’t, then we probably need to do something else. We need to use wherever we are to learn and grow as we keep our eye on our dreams. We need to know that what we are doing is preparation for our future and might actually be our dream already, we are just too sure of our own plan to see where life is taking us. We need to see that where we are now might be important to our future and/or to someone we come in contact with.
I don’t mean to say give up a dream or settle for where you are. Making the most of what you have and where you are with an eye toward the future isn’t giving up. It is making the most of what you have today. It is using what you have now to be your best.
When my son was taking a few detours in college to explore options and play football, he often worried that he was taking too long. He saw others his age finish school and move on. He doubted his path. I told him as long as he was moving forward overall, as long as he was growing and learning, it was all good.
And he found his path, and he moved forward slowly but surely. He grew and he learned about life and himself. And he finished school and has done well. He is still moving forward, as am I. If we ever stop moving forward, that is when we have trouble.
And when something happens to set us back, we get up and move on again. And again. And again.
Just like my mom, I am getting older. And so is my son, and so are you. We have limited days, but we have no limit on how much we can grow and learn and continue on our path. It might be hard, it might get tougher as we go, it might seem impossible at times. It might feel like we missed the boat altogether.
I, for one, will not throw in the towel. I take whatever I do seriously, even when I am not sure what I am doing. I buy into every phase of life, every gift, every moment I am given. I hope that something I do matters and I keep moving forward as best I can.
I had no plan to teach kids. I still don’t. In college a few years ago I kept being asked if I had come back to study theatre to teach and I was insulted. Did they really think I could not act, all I could do is teach?? But now that I have realized I don’t have to teach in the conventional way, that I can tell stories and answer questions and just lead students through a production, all the while seeing them grow and bloom, I realize that whatever I do, it can be worthwhile if I do it with all of my heart and with conviction.
I don’t take myself too seriously (I hope) and I want to write about that next, but I take my commitment to what I do, who I am and what I stand for very seriously. It is what keeps me going. Seriously.
