Becoming an actor
Therapy this Thursday
This post is, miraculously! under 10 minutes long!
The chores are done (the first instalment, anyway - I need to go out in a bit and put the horses back into their wider world). The day stretches before me, a mix of obligation, choice, some flexibility required, and a whole pile of possible responsibilities I could tackle. As usual, I’ve started the day writing Morning Pages, and continued a sort of musing reverie (waking up slowly!) as I walked through the very pre-dawn ice.
It’s very icy. The thaw we’re in (dramatic, quite startling for the trees, I’m sure) caused precipitation to come down as rain yesterday. The large banks of snow, so sparkly in the blue January palette of light and shadow, are now muddy, salty wrecks of their former selves. Any snow that was packed, even a little, is slick and convex, causing my muscles to tense, and stay tensed, testing my steps, struggling to find upright in the sideways and sudden landscape of this morning.
I take a breath. Another. Feel how my Mind wants to levitate up and out of the room. Feel how my Body reacts with resignation and a sinking into itself. Feel how I don’t feel, precisely. What is my Heart noticing? All the signals outside me. All the ways I could find…what? Safety? Security? Control?
My defaults run deep and wide and persistently. It is one hard thing to shift an entire view, the whole shebang, keeping some beliefs, but losing their neighbours. Thinning the forest of my yard, opening up new pathways, and then trying to walk on them often enough that they pack. So the new paths show up when I need them. Supersede the other pathways, going nowhere good.
Space. Softness. Grace. Ahhh.
I want these. But more than these, underneath their feathery protection (vs the armour made of metal plating I’ve been accustomed to donning) I want choice. I want to start the day, not have the day start me. I want to be still, look around, take inventory, and act.
I want to be an actor, not a re-actor. I want to decide and do, based on who I am, and who I want to become, not on anything else. Not on others’ promises, threats, role-playing games, or great ideas for my life.
This sounds scary, because who am I to come up with a life plan? How qualified could I possibly be to take the magnitude of possibility that is a life, my life, and create my own work of art, my own interior and exterior home, my own storyline, arc, cast of characters, and resolution?
To date, I have struggled with imposter syndrome, and deferred, mightily, to others. People who are more definite, “cool,” competent, powerful, seemingly balanced, and who do things the right way. (There are so many wrong ways and so few right ways, and I defer, also, in those sorts of judgements, because again, who am I to make that sort of evaluation?)
This, perhaps, is coming close to the overall heading, the title of the work I’m doing, of which one hard thing is simply a strategy, and home a goal, or maybe an origin point.
Not so much just referencing myself, or others, but reality as the sum total of truth, and how it is my job to navigate truth, not simply follow others’ interpretations of its vast complexity.
Space requires a soft, balanced centre point, to work out from. Softness requires a knowledge of one’s power, and a decision, moment by moment, to use the least necessary force, but enough force to be effective, preferably the first time. Grace means I forgive, and forgive, and allow, and allow. It takes deadlines away, stops the judgment, lowers the stakes, and finds the humour in the try. It’s okay, we’ve got this, we’re going to get there. Failing is part of the progress.
And occasionally, there are moments that call for celebration. Sometimes, my Heart, Mind, and Body work together and I experience an unaccustomed but wholly magnificent sense of flow. Here and there, I notice beauty, without feeling outside of that beauty. And time doesn’t exactly stop, more holds me in a gentle current, moving neither swiftly nor slowly, but just exactly how it wants to travel.
And as it relates to the people around me; those I love, those I must put up with, those I may come to love in time - I’d like to work towards connection, but not the transactional kind. What type of knot would work well for the net I live within? How to create a collection of many “weak ties,” as opposed to levering for captives, or followers, or dependents of any sort?
I think, reading others’ work, both fiction and non-, both helpful and inscrutable, that the outsides of you must (sometimes) connect with the outside of me, and the outside of me could (sometimes) connect with the inside of me, and if the outside of you (occasionally) connects with the inside of you, then there could (occasionally) be a segmented, slightly mis-translated, but still earnest connection between the inside of me and the inside of you.
That would be nice. I’d like that. That would be me acting, but still in community. Still in relationship. Just a different quality of relationship. Completely.
I don’t think I can successfully (in any metric I would choose, anyway) engineer a forceful relationship with anyone (not even my own inner team members!). There are too many gates and fences and doors and walkways to shut down and too many protective reflexes that will shut them down in response to a perceived “invasion.”
Here’s an imaginal scenario:
I want, instead, to situate myself quietly in my own safer home, surrounded by useful and beautiful tools and furniture and art, with clean windows, good locks on the doors, a functional floorpan, and some yard/garden area between the house and the street. Then, I want to wake up in that safe sanctuary, stretch, collect myself, take care of my own needs and space and plants and living things, and finally choose a path for the day.
Perhaps staying at home, working there in solitude and spacious quiet, or maybe venturing out, locking my door behind me, but leaving my own space behind and joining the common areas, the places of commerce and trade and social gathering and group “fun” or “work” or “exploration.”
I’d like to choose which it will be, not from a total constraint-free existence, but with respect to the responsibilities I have chosen (previously) to assume, and the demands that come bundled with my aims for the future, what I want, who I envision I could become, and where I could place myself in relation to other people, events, institutions, and natural terrain.
Acting, as opposed to waking up and beginning a series of small and large reactions to others, to demands, expectations, transactional agreements, and pressures of all types, is a different way to experience daily life. Acting presupposes competence, awareness, presence, and connections that are not coercive.
Acting, being the actor in my life, means I cause effects, and choose my actions in response to others’ actions, and carefully weigh my responses, rather than simply re-acting, which is to say, rather than simply acting in a reflexive and unconsidered way because I was nudged, or pushed, or pulled, or simply hauled from one place to another. Becoming an actor means I am relinquishing the ties that bind me to others’ plans for my life, and cutting bonds, severing associations, starting over as a point on a graph, with a four dimensional universe of options around, under, and over me. Acting starts the action with my own soul at home, up at bat, watching the pitcher, choosing when to swing.
This sounds so harsh. It is harsh. It is a definite statement of disagreement with some scripts, and the placement of myself as an agent having choice. And yes, I realize no one has any kind of unlimited free choice, not even the billionaires, not even the Beautiful People who seem so carefree and independent. But all of us, the lowest, the highest, and the considerable middle, have an option of a whole. Each of us exist in our own small centre, and each of us can choose, if nothing else, to brace against the pushes, or to counterbalance rather than falling, or to fight to live, rather than submit to annihilation. We might get annihilated, anyway. But the fighting does matter, if not to the aggressors, then to our neighbours, allies, undecided onlookers.
Looking backwards, to previous contracts, choices, and placements of myself within the physical world, I agree with those decisions. I decide again to settle in to the relationships I’ve nourished. I affirm the long road that brought me here; all the forks I chose between, all the detours and shortcuts and long winding treks back and forth. I accept and embrace what was given me in that journey, to date. I am grateful for what was difficult and I appreciate what was easy.
Looking ahead, I realize there is a wide horizon, many possible destinations to aim for, and a lot of room for changing my mind. It’s a prairie, not a tightrope. I can afford more meandering, spiralling even, some following my nose, some investigating the pretty flowers. That said, it would be nice to choose a point to head towards, in a circuitous manner, horse-like. I could do this with space, softness, and grace, rather than setting myself into a line I can’t deviate from, with my life at stake, and judgement for every misstep.
Looking around, I decide to notice abundance, a gift economy (I’m reading The Serviceberry, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and it’s absolutely gorgeous) just waiting to be participated in, magic in all its magical forms, and my own breath. I am alive. That in itself is a miracle. Yes, there is adversity, chaos every direction I look, and unexpected perturbations every few minutes meaning I struggle for any balance at all, but still. Still.
Therapy this Thursday
What about you?
Is your typical stance, first thing in the morning, one of action, or re-action?
How much choice and agency do you take on, assume, or deny yourself, as you note your reflection in the mirror, begin the myriad small and large tasks that wait for you each day?
It’s easy to simply move with or against pressure. It’s hard, very hard, to not only stop using outside pressure to inform your movements, but instead generate pressure from within, from your home, from your own soul.
This can almost feel violent, in its unexpected and diverse effects on your surroundings, your next door neighbours, your stable status quo.
And it’s certainly not necessary. It’s possible to live days, weeks, months, years, decades simply reacting to others’ ideas and pushes and pulls. Energy is everywhere. You don’t need, strictly speaking, to create your own.
But…wouldn’t it be nice to be The Actor in Your Life?
One Hard Thing: Start your day with a pause. Be still. Choose. Decide. Act in response to nothing but your inner compass. Balance first, and deal with other’s reactions to you as gently (but effectively) as you can.
How does that feel? What do you notice? What options open up, and what other doors close? And can you do this keeping your feet on the ground, anchored in reality, with gravity on your side, and sensing the world all around you?
Might take a few tries, or many. But this is the sort of change I’m willing to sacrifice a lot to enjoy.
I think finding the point to start from is kinda the point.