During the final dress rehearsal of the play I was just involved with, one of the actors forgot a line and the whole scene just kind of came to an early end. That is part of the magic of live theatre- you never know what might happen! Every day is different! Sometimes you can bluff your way through a mishap and sometimes things just fall off of the rails and there is no going back.
During intermission, the actor apologized profusely and just couldn’t shake what had occurred. My comment was, “It happens. It’s behind us. We have the rest of the show to do. Just stay in the moment.”
The rest of the show was great. Even that mess up was perfect, because it helped all of us to stay on our toes and keep working towards an even better show from that point forward.
Bottom line, we are all human. Without the ability to call “cut” and start again, live theatre (and life) tests us all from start to finish. It tests our memories, our stamina, our concentration, and our ability to stay in the present moment.
I’ve said before that I really learned to stay in the moment while I was in college a few years ago. I learned that the best way to stay in the moment is to dance. While dancing, whether jazz, tap or ballet, you have no choice but keep your mind right where you are or you will probably fall. It was the best lesson in staying in the moment.
As I’ve also said before, it is uncanny how often the sermon on Sunday is about the same thing I am thinking about or experiencing. The current series is on being present and it hit home once again how my theatre world and real life intersect.
In theatre you really can never drop your guard and coast. It immediately shows to your fellow actors and the audience senses it. If you are not engaged or are insincere, everyone watching knows it. Maybe that is why I am so quick to know when people in my day to day life disengage from a conversation. I often see the blank look glaze over their eyes and can feel when someone quits paying attention to what is being said around them. Usually the biggest indication is the phone that they hold as a shield between themselves and the real world!
It is a known fact that you can not give 100% of yourself to two different things at once. If you are looking at your phone or some other screen while having a conversation, you are only giving a portion of yourself to your device and a portion to the person you are supposedly talking to. One hundred percent is all there is folks, so you can’t give it to 2 different things at the same time. Do the math!
So often at the end of the day, when I write in my journal, I have to think about what exactly I did with the hours in my day. I usually remember working out because that takes all of my concentration. I usually remember what I cooked and what I wrote that day because I enjoy and stay fairly engaged in both activities. I always remember what happened at rehearsal because that totally takes me out of the real world and plunges me into the world we are creating on stage.
Too often though, there are big gaps in my memory of the day. Too much time was spent not really being present, just mindlessly doing chores or dealing with day to day issues that don’t register in my mind because I really didn’t engage in what I was doing.
One of the chores I never really liked was doing the laundry. Fortunately I like to cook and clean and decorate, but getting groceries and doing the laundry I am not so fond of! I have a friend who loves to do laundry! (If that isn’t proof of how different we all are, nothing is!)
While we would be on vacation together at the beach she would wash clothes almost daily. She talked about laundry with real fondness at times and once I saw her reading a book entitled “Laundry”!! Weird!
One day while at the beach I was talking to her as she took some clothes out of the dryer and began to fold them. She smelled each item as she pulled it out and almost caressed the clothes as she neatly folded them. I began to help her and caught myself no longer talking, but really experiencing what I was doing.
Now before you say how crazy this sounds, let me just say that it really changed my position on laundry. I realized it was something I was going to have to do, so why not see if I could enjoy it by being present when I worked on it, be thankful I had things to wash, that I had a machine that makes the job easy and that I have my senses to experience the whole process.
Now I don’t get as touchy- feely with my laundry as my friend and I would never say I love doing laundry, but I have a greater appreciation for the chore now that I try to stay engaged and grateful. I also transferred that lesson to other chores I have to do.
It bothers me when I feel like I let a day slip though my fingers, when I realize that I must not have done anything of worth because I don’t even remember what I did! It seems like the most wasteful thing I can do!
In the midst of getting this play ready, I had many other things weighing on my mind. Taking time to stay in the moment at rehearsal took me away from the things I was worrying about.
During the sermon it was said that worrying makes us miss out on the present moment. It doesn’t change what has happened or what will happen, it just robs you of the moment that you have right now.
So very often I have to stop myself because I think about how relieved I will be when something is over. “I will be so glad when this show is over” or ‘If I can just make it to Friday, I’ll be happy.” I have to stop myself from wishing my life away. I have to stop and savor each moment, good or bad. What if Friday never comes for me and I missed today because I was focused on Friday? Maybe I am missing the lessons of the present situation by wishing to get through it and out the other side.
Last year my only resolution was to try to watch my life unfold the way I watch a play. To not force things so much, to not rush things all of the time, to not predetermine how I think things should happen, but just let it happen. It has been tough and I have failed more than I have succeeded. Thinking about each moment, trying to do what I must to be ready for the future and remembering the lessons of the past, but keeping my attention and focus on the here and now is quite the tightrope walk that I am not really very good at.
Overall, I’m getting better. I try to keep my “black mirrors” put away when I have real life happening around me. I try to push aside the things I can’t do anything about and handle what I need to do today.
One of my tips for organizing and handling life that I share when asked is to schedule a specific day that you do certain things. I wash my sheets and towels every Tuesday, I pay bills on the first and 10th of the month, I do meal planning on Sunday night.
I know life doesn’t follow a schedule very well. Stuff happens. Believe me, my schedule gets changed way more than it stays the same. But it helps me to not worry about the bills every day, knowing that the 1st and 10th will come soon enough and I will work on that worry on that day. The other days I can concentrate on other things.
I also know that engaging with people is way more important than the busy work of our lives. When I worked at the bank in my previous life, many of my coworkers saw a customer as an interruption of the busy work we had to do behind the scenes. In actuality, the customer WAS our work. The rest was filler and could wait. I learned from that job to throw the schedule out of the window when a real live person needed me right now. I try to look at the person talking to me and engage with them by not only hearing them, but really seeing them.
After all, isn’t that what all of us want- to really be seen and really be heard. Isn’t that what makes a moment memorable? To be able to connect with another person and know that you really were there for them, that you put away your worries, set aside your schedule, and focused on this moment with this person?
After 2 weeks of nothing but the play I was directing consuming me and using up my time, I am in need of some down time, some time alone. I need some nights at home with my husband and my cat, to eat dinner together, to watch our favorite shows, and to relax. The push and pull of my need to connect with others and my need for solitude is tricky. Staying engaged with what is happening right now is tricky. Staying on schedule and yet being available is tricky. Life is tricky.
