Insight To Chaos

I woke up to James Taylor this morning.  Really, I was only dozing at that point, but somehow his serenade is what brought me to coherence.  “When you’re down, and you’re troubled, and you need a helping hand, I’ll come running…”  I smiled.  I contemplated, briefly, what old Jim what was telling me – do I have a friend or should I be that friend?  No matter, I decided it was both.  I smiled again.

Later on this morning, a different radio station played “Fire and Rain.”  I chuckled, wondering if the universe might be sending me signs through old folk songs.  Why not?  That’s what music does, right?  Speaks to your soul, answering your questions, giving words to your feelings…and all to a catchy beat.  If anything, it is at least a kindred spirit.

Sometimes I wish it were that simple.  Communication can get tripped up so easily.

I have come to further believe that the purpose in life is to love.  Where love is an entity both separate and united with all things, good and bad.  It exists within all of us, but only ever to the capacity with which we allow. No matter the definition, it is the one most pure, most joyous, most painful word/feeling/expression in existence.

Lennon was right, all you need IS love. The rest is completely attainable, both exclusively and inclusively of that one thing.

I love you.

Awakening. Induced paralyzation. Voiceless. Willful. Faint sounds of my own voice through a locked jaw. A Gray cat enters, injured. One, three inch bolt. Breaking free. Screaming. Searching. Suspicion of a hoax. Revelation. A sound stage set for melodrama. Murder mystery. I am myself, but I am given a character with no back story. New setting: Home – front lawn. A director’s assistant with no director present. Distant observation of a cast preparing. Time constraints. Running late. Dress rehearsal. No thinking. Go.

“What we are does not change, but who we are never stops changing.”

William Peterson said that on CSI last year, and like most profound adages said on popular television dramas, it has stuck with me. One more in an encyclopedia of clichés and idioms and musings banked and ready to reiterate when my own words escape me.

It’s true though. We really are always changing – adapting and evolving regardless of conscious thought. Funny then how the insurgence of active thinking can affect everything. Perhaps that may be where doubt resides, functioning as the messy roommate to logic. But, I suppose like with anything else, one cannot exist without the other to balance it.

Most often, when I tell people that I’m an actress, they ask me how I get over my nerves when I’m on stage. My answer is always the same: I don’t. My anxiety is pretty fierce too, sometimes so much so that my entire body will shake. The best I can do is try to use it. I always think of that moment right before I go on stage: I’m so consumed with what is about to happen, down to every little detail and wanting to ensure a flawless performance; to take the rehearsed and the unexpected and balance them effortlessly. Then, it’s time. I take a deep breath and exhale a very quiet, “ready or not, here I come,” and next thing I know I’m on stage doing it. Most times I don’t even realize how nervous I was until I’m about to fall asleep, so many hours after the show.

A bit of a trite example perhaps, but it helps me remember that I actually can do the big, nerve shaking stuff…when I’m not so enthralled with whether or not I can do big, nerve shaking stuff. Sometimes, I really don’t like that…deciding the big, nerve shaking stuff. Rather, I dislike the responsibility to myself to choose what is right for me when the answer isn’t already crystal clear. Doubt sets in and my list of pros and cons becomes a list of all that I would be gaining and losing, but mostly what I would be losing. Somehow I lose sight of the fact that I know anything and everything can always be worked out, providing my willingness to do so. I become paralyzed with indecision. Most times, it ultimately works out just fine. Sometimes, things get tabled pending further information. But, that mean time, that limbo I put myself through…that may very well be my own personal pet peeve.

I wholeheartedly believe in timing. Allowing the universe to help you along your way without ever losing sight of your own responsibility to choose – actively living with purpose while allowing for the unknown. I suppose most people call that “taking chances,” go figure. But I think timing plays a bigger factor. Wanting plus patience and endurance will eventually allow for circumstance and opportunity to line up favorably.

This year started out with huge re-evaluations for me. Long overdue decisions that finally became all too clear. Even still, shifting my list of priorities left me in a bit of a limbo for a while. Not too long though. Still, this year has felt somewhat sprinkled with indolence that may finally be waning. I’ve decided, among so many other things, to look for a new job. This might not otherwise seem so big if the abundance of factors weren’t quite so distinguished. That list of unknowns that I would be gaining from a new job is rather hard to compare to the comfort (and discomfort) I already know I have. It’s time though, it’s been time for while. As it happens, just this week I found what may be exactly the kind of work I have been hoping to find for a very long time and all I can think is that I would be a damn fool if I didn’t take the chance. The words “ready or not…” just keep ringing in my ears.

I’ve never really been one to put too much stock in New Year’s resolutions. Yet, come the end of August every year as my birthday approaches, I find myself reflecting on all that’s gone on in the months since turning another year older; the laughing, the loving, the crying. By my birthday every year, I will have asked myself if where I am is where I wanted to be a year ago. I’ll rejoice in the achievement of certain goals and make a plan to refocus the ones that haven’t yet come to full fruition. I’ll pick pieces of me, emotionally or physically, that I think could do well with a year’s worth of concentrated evolution. My own little A-type self experimentation in achieving a personal best from one year to the next. In part, I think it’s good – always trying to find a better me. But if this last year has taught me anything, it may very well be that the details or carefully-picked pieces can just as easily blur a picture as it can clarify it.

A long time ago, I promised myself that I wouldn’t invest myself in others or allow them to invest anything in me until I honestly felt there was something worth the venture. I found, even as a teenager, that it was all too easy to get caught up in somebody else’s version of version of me – that definition of happiness (or sadness, in some cases) by what others saw or felt. That has never been a bad thing, of course. It’s an absolutely exquisite feeling to see and enjoy how elements of you affect others. But that’s just it – only elements of you. How often do we show people all of who we are? How often do we keep parts of ourselves hidden for fear of judgment, or ultimately the stealing away of that happiness, defined by people who never had the full picture? We are complicated beings, all searching for love and happiness and thus, more often than not, ruled by fear and vulnerability. But…what’s so wrong with that entire picture of any one of us that we might not deserve that which we seek so desperately? Answer: Nothing. But who is ever going to love us how we want or need if we don’t do it for ourselves first?

So, back to me, 19 years old, birthday-vowing no more investment until I could first be the person I wanted me to be. Great plan; hard to carry out quickly with life still rapidly whirling around me. And here I am, 10 years later, on the eve of another birthday, asking myself the same questions. The catch is, this time all of my answers are finally different. Yeah, I have accomplished some pretty cool things this year. Yeah, I have other goals and stuff I want to get done. But as for the other stuff? Invested. Fully. In myself, in the people I love, in the people that love me. Funny thing too, it took the love of another to finally set that last piece in place – to show me what was already there, just a bit askew from trying to focus on too much detail. Ironic indeed, nevertheless completely apropos.

Here’s the thing, if our perceptions are truly our own – if our uniqueness is in HOW we see things, shouldn’t it be in how we feel things as well? My answer: Yes. Yes, absolutely. It’s all out there: love, happiness, friendship, malice, anger, guilt. It’s what we each choose to do with ALL of it, how we allow it to be part of our lives that really make us who we are. In that and only that, we are thus solely responsible for our own happiness and our own sadness. The affect we have on others, the affect they have on us can, of course, add or subtract from each experience. But ultimately, the experience as a whole is 100% purely our own, whether we concentrate on the pieces or the whole.

Obviously a lot has happened in 10 years. Each new experience has brought new opportunity to learn and expand, a chance to come closer to being this ideal, put-together A-type test subject I have always thought people would most like to keep around. And that description is me…to a point. As for the rest of me though…turns out people see that too. The ones who are actually looking anyway. Somehow, this year, all the walls came down. I invested in my friends, my village – finally trusting them to accept and love me for all of the stuff I bring to the table. Made new friends. Re-connected with so many old friends. I invested in myself – finally forgiving me for ever being so fallible as to be human. I sought forgiveness in others for pain that I have caused. I opened my eyes, looked around and found love – accidentally, intentionally, ever-present, unwavering. I’ll be honest, it’s completely overwhelming to all at once realize just how much you are capable of loving and of being loved in return. I have finally perceived the reality I sought out so long ago. It’s pretty darn awesome. Nobody else can change that for me now either, nor do I have any desire to alter it myself. My 28th year has been wild indeed. A LOT of happy, a fair amount of sad and absolutely no regrets whatsoever.

I’m not making any goals for this year. If for nothing else than to enjoy the hell out of my last year in my twenties…and let whatever will be, be. I’m taking all the good, leaving the pain and carrying it forward with nothing but hope for more to come and faith that it will. Happy new year.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” -Steve Jobs

“I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”

I say: “Word.”

I was supposed to send this to 12 people for my wish to come true. So I have 4 days to find 12 readers. Or I’ll just post this for anybody who stumbles upon it:

– May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

Word.

Who am I? What do I want? How will I get it? What are my obstacles? How will I move past those obstacles to achieve what I want?
In acting, these are the first questions we are taught to answer for every character, for every scene. But the situation bears reasoning, why shouldn’t we also apply them in life? Aren’t these the very things we’re asked growing up? But why are they only grade school questions? Why is it we don’t wake up every morning with a new or sustaining answer to each of those questions? With every day’s answer culminating in a grander, perhaps even more compounded idea or answer to the very first question. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you all do this every day. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that my copy of “Life for Dummies,” is missing a chapter or two.
Nonetheless, after spending so much time feeling completely scattered and directionless; after spending the greater part of my twenties reforming what pubescence left me, perhaps it’s a good time to ask myself these questions again. Less so in a grander sense this time. I no longer need to have an answer to what I want to be when I grow up. That question was always flawed anyway. Statistically speaking, I will be a million things to myself and to those around me, but odds are I will never be an astronaut. So why not break down the million things instead?
I am relevant to my world as I perceive it, not how it perceives me. Who am I? I am the driving force in my own happiness. I am sappy, silly, sardonic, defiant, loving, loyal, insightful and honest. I am the unexpected wall you are leaning on right now. I believe the greatest thing there is in this world is love, but I also believe it is a commodity worth deserving. As such, when I give it I do so with every fiber of my being. Ironically, I am only just learning to allow for the same for myself. I am everything you never thought to expect. I will continue to defy your under-estimation. The rest will come…day by day.

The start to one very long, recurring post. Here is a quote of the day from a friend. Worth reading, sharing, applying and living by. More to come….

“But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart . . .”

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” -Siddhartha Buddha