It's been a long time - for me - since I've written, mostly due to the heat, being busy, a few surprises, and all the fanfare I shower myself with when I'm motivated enough to change my life yet again. I've actually written a lot - nothing blog-worthy - but on the eve of a new challenge, I feel the need to catch up and really seek out a moment of clarity and perspective about my life so far. Why now? Is what I'm about to do that important? Not really, it's just a writing class I'm starting tomorrow. What would inspire me to stop and look back now, other than the fact that most of my writing will be focused on the study of writing?
I've got a year to live.
Don't read that wrong. I'm not planning on dying, nor am I sick. I mean, I don't know when it'll happen, but if I go, I currently have everything I want. I have a few really good friends who are committed to life and our investment in it together. My family's doing great. I've had a whole life in theater stuffed into a decade and promise of bigger and better things. I've found a way to pay attention to what people are saying and doing, and I'm endlessly entertianed by the dance around me. I'm so thankful for what I have, but yes, all this can change, so I'm inspired to make better use of my time and get back to living a slightly larger life. That includes getting on my career, getting back to learning and seeking new places and people, and even new avenues of charity now that the one through work is caught up in the merger and the other one through theater has no home for the moment. I've sat in the cocoon of home recuperating from having left my actors and my stage, but I am currently in the midst of recreating and rising from what was.
I have a year to live. Really live. And then after that, I have another one. It allows me a chance to make plans beyond saying "I have a day to live". This is basically me saying that I'm optimistic about my future and not weighed down with regret. My mistakes from the past, especially the ones that invited recurring patterns, only lend to my experience and not to my character. My character is all about the things my friends recognize: I love, and love with my whole heart, and I take care of the people close to me. I'm opinionated but committed, eager to connect (sometimes to a fault), but at the same time - and most of the time - I choose to go my own way.
Here's what my experience dictates: Acting has taught me to not respond until I'm really provoked or inspired to react. I only recently learned this on a personal level. Also, you own your own perceptions and issues with the outside world. 90% of the time, people have more than enough on their own plate to accomodate worrying about your problems, so...this is what I tell myself...pull yourself together and keep moving. If you can do all this and choose happiness over anything that might slow you down or obscure your view from the answers you need on a daily basis, you can pretty much stay young and true to yourself. It's not easy, but sometimes the practice surprises you, and you find the spectacular in the simple moments of the day. Alternatively, you could be distracted by the unsolvable mysteries of situations that are completely out of your hands. It's your choice.
Yeah, you have to accept that there are things you can't help or change. You have to be okay with that. There are mysterious people in the margins of my life who play by their own rules and on rare occasions enter my world like strange lights in the sky, appearing and disappearing without explanation. I used to think that the exchange was somehow a reflection of me, both an attraction to who I was perceived to be and a repulsion to the realization of who I actually am. In reality, it has nothing to do with me, and I have to either let those moments go or fight the temptation to reach for them. It's usually both. I'm still practicing the balance of that.
What's the worst that would happen if you, in a mixed moment of courage, changed a response to something, or said exactly what was on your mind? What would happen if you suddenly chose to not do something expected of your character or decided to stop living a life that isn't working for you? You and I have that same year to look forward to, my friend. It can be whatever you want it to be. We do, after all, have a year to live, and in the end...if it really is the end...it would be such a crime to have wasted it.
We are still here. That means we have a choice. Isn't that all the power we need to begin?
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