If I have learned one thing over and over it is the simultaneously uplifting and disheartening lesson that you cannot count on anyone or anything. I realize how that sounds, and I do partly mean it in that way; I have been let down by many people and institutions and I should just learn not to depend on people or things. This is hard when you’re trying to build communities but you don’t trust anyone. The key to it, I’m continuing to learn, is to make sure that you are capable of achieving whatever it is on your own. Don’t make your only goal in life to be hired by a specific theatre company, make the theatre you want to make by yourself. Or at least be able to.
But I also mean that you can’t count on anything in the way that you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of my favorite things about life, in fact. That you just never know. you can try and plan but there’s no guarantee that those plans will play out uninterrupted.
Recently I’ve been making a lot of declarative and decisive statements.
I will quit my job.
I will move out of philly.
I will go to massage school.
I don’t do that very often. I tend to be (definitely try to be, I know I don’t always achieve it) a go with the flow kind of guy because you just never know and I like to see how the story plays out without my hand necessarily making the decisions. But once in a while you have to assess a situation and take decisive action. I feel this is an important thing to be able to do, at least to not be afraid of. But there’s a reason I don’t do I it very often because living by PRINCIPLES and DECISIONS that you can’t go against don’t necessarily allow you to get what you need. Anne Bogart talks about the violence of making decisions and boy is she right. By making one decision you are eliminating all other possible decisions.
So I did move out of philly and I am going to massage school. But I’m sort of back at my job. And it turns out it’s the best thing happening right now. It’s nice to be in a comfortable place where I know how things work and people know and trust me and I know how to get my job done. Being there in this current stage of life is allowing me a freedom I never had before. I have the freedom of not really having to care. This isn’t the only thing I have “going on” right now so when the show’s over I can walk away and go back to my life leaving those feelings in Philadelphia.
I met someone. We’ve been flirting and seeing other casually for a long time now. Every once in a while we’d get to spend some more serious time together and every time I’d come away feeling revitalized and like the best version of myself. So today I decided to make it serious and extended the invitation to move in together. they’re called the Zen Book. It’s full of potentially cheesy affirmations and verses that speak in a voice I need to hear right now. What’s really coming through right now is the idea that my greater spiritual responsibility is nothing. Is to listen and sit and be. Also it smells like my favorite bookstore where I bought it.
This is maybe getting off topic. But by listening and doing nothing I was able to hear that actually that decisive violent decision to leave my job was maybe what I needed in the moment I made it, but that staying with the job is actually proving to me an amazing thing. It allows me to…well a lot of things actually, but the best thing it allows me to do is sit back for a second and have a big strong hearty laugh at the world and its foibles.
I think this stage of life (at least this part of this stage) is about humility. Is about swallowing any pride I may have had and addressing my needs in this one moment. I don’t care what anyone says about my decisions. Because who knows what will happen tomorrow.
in that spirit, here's a thing that a lot of people will think is stupid. But I like it because it makes me feel small and inconsequential to the enormous swirling madness happening all the time without any input from me.
Blessings.
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