I’ve spent a lot of my life in imitation. I would see someone doing something I found interesting and I’d try to copy them. I can tell you from first hand experience this never works. It made me look like an unoriginal follower.
In fact it started out by taking a drama class in the 7th grade. I was never particularly interested in acting and honestly I’m really kind of shy. But my best friends’ father was the drama coach and all my other friends were taking the class. So I did too. The thing with me is that it didn’t stop in 8th grade, or high school. I took drama all the way through high school graduation then did a stint in community college, then auditioned for and got accepted to NYU.
That’s a long time to be doing something that really didn’t fit me. I’m sure there were clues along the way that it wasn’t for me, but I didn’t see them. One clue I did notice was when I opened up the fridge to make a screwdriver and thought I could really do this acting thing if I just stayed drunk all the time. Yeah, I would say that was a definite sign I wasn’t living my authentic life.
The final straw, or as I call it, the universe saying a big no, was when I broke my leg. You know the good luck slogan before going on stage is “break a leg,” well I did, literally. You have to admit the universe has a hell of a sense of humor. I was in acting class and it was leap day of leap year. It was over. The whole charade. That got me off the path that wasn’t right for me. I left NYU and never acted again.
After that I started looking for what I loved to do, the things that really matched who I was. And after quite some time I realized it wasn’t so much what others were doing that I was attracted to, but how what they were doing organically expressed some deep and true part of them. It’s not so much that I wanted to live their life, it showed me the unexpressed parts in myself that wanted a voice. What I wanted was my own authentic way of living.
In acting it takes a lot of work to develop a character. It’s about inhabiting another person so completely you lose yourself and take on this persona. It’s extensive and exhausting. I wanted to do that for myself, not the character I was playing. I wanted to do the work of finding out who I really am, what I am really about. Slowly I’ve been collecting these pieces of my soul as I go along this journey of my life. I think in the end it’s about discerning between what really belongs in our lives and what doesn’t really suit us.
Authenticity is what is required of us. We are asked to look deeper and longer to see what really wants to be expressed. What are the things asking to be incorporated into our daily lives?
What lurks unlived in you? And will you finally let it out?
Here’s to living the questions.
kb
