As soon as I heard about the cast of Nine, I couldn’t wait to see it. As December 25, 2009 closed in, more and more interviews and clips were being revealed—who can forget the Oprah interview (oy, that was good)—causing my anticipation to reach a boiling point. I wanted to see that movie diddymao. It. Looked. So. Good. Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Judy Dench, SOPHIA LOREN, and dancing and singing and Italy?!!!! I mean, come on, it’s my perfect movie! And then I saw it. And I left with a giant “Meh” on my face. You know what “Meh” looks like. It’s when something really isn’t bad, per se—I mean, I liked Nine. I did. I thought it was a good movie. But “Meh” results when the way you imagined something to be is leaps and bounds better than the actual product or event. You always try to make the event logically seem good in your head, but in your heart you know it kinda sucked. Like the last Indiana Jones movie. Or the prom. Or the iPad.
When I was a young munchkin with an original Nintendo DS, I loved the Super Mario Bros. Games. My sister used to say that watching me play was like watchingan artist; I knew exactly when to jump, exactly where to go to get that extra life, to push that high score. I made a goal of beating every level--perfectly, immaculately. I did--except the last one. For some reason I could never bring myself to finish the games. Why? Who knows. Perhaps I got distracted. Perhaps I'd change preferences and attempted to beat Temple of Doom. Perhaps I changed my fixation to Surfer Ken. Frankly, there were too many roads for distraction to even guess at the cause of my abandonment.
Flash forward almost twenty years to a game for my iPhone called Ricky. With its recent update, it's a pretty blatant knock off of the Original Mario Bros. Except it's a little different, as in annoyingly inconsistently different. And when I say annoyingly inconsistent, I mean the controls don't always work the way you want them to, the "enemies" don't always die the way they should, and the characters/jumps/moves are inconsistent to the point where you have to rush through the game to win, never being able to solidify a strategy due to its ever-changing rhythm. I found myself so aggravated that I couldn't get it perfect the first go round, any go round, couldn't explore the perfect play, that I would scream obscenities and exit out of it mid-level. At some point, I caught myself--weren't these games supposed to be fun? Weren't they supposed to be difficult to master/conquer? Weren't the original games just as difficult for me to play?
The answer? No. I don't ever really remember being bad at anything. Certainly there were things where I wasn't the best, but rarely something where I was ever truly horrible. I made high A's and B's all throughout school, and considered the definition of studying to be reading the book. Sure, I made pneumonic devices like everyone else, but I'd do it in the first read instead of the fourth or fifth. I got bored with things pretty easily. I'd generally stop something just short of mastering it in search of the next great wonderment. Even today this "plagues" me. I took up racquetball. Had some natural talent in the beginning of the game, but was unwilling to stick it through when I started sucking. Even as an actor. I'm a great actor. I went to school; I'm very trained, and frankly, pretty good at what I do. But I don't audition frequently enough to get parts to actually do what I love. I consistently stop short of actually being able to say that I can do something. Which is pretty effed up. Why do I do this? Where did the pattern start? How do I break it?
I've talked to some of my friends about this, and they said that they experienced the same thing. You see, I have some pretty amazing, talented, ridiculously smart friends. But some of us found that we were all in the same predicament. We had so much potential. We have so much potential. With our talents, we should be taking over the world, yet, most of us were stuck in menial positions, making barely enough money to get by (or perhaps too much to say goodbye to in search of fulfillment), and unsure as to how we got stuck, or, even more importantly, how to get unstuck. We were all told that we could do anything when we were younger, be anything, have everything that we wanted, but weren't given the instructions on how to go about doing so. It's kinda like that game Ricky. Here we were, expecting these obstacles that we could face and master, but each time we attempt to conquer them, the game changes and we have to start over. We're finding our way, but miserably, and not really enjoying it like we thought we would. I find myself fighting the urge to quit because, frankly, the idea of not playing, of bowing out and going back home a failure, is so unpalatable that I can't even see it as an option. I'm not playing to save some imaginary Princess, I'm playing to accomplish my dreams. Which are big. And scary.
I looked at all of my friends, listening to their problems with work, hearing my own complaints, and I realized that we weren't acknowledging our own worth. We weren't owning our greatness. We are these beautiful, exuberant, talented individuals who felt like failures because we were messing up on jobs that monkeys could do with facile. In my own day job, I feel meaningless. Frustrated. Not because the work is meaningless, but because I know that it is meaningless to my existence. My "survival job" has nothing to do with accomplishing my dreams; it only serves to barely pay for my expenses and maybe make me fortunate enough to hang out with friends once or twice a month. Yet, it takes up 60% of my week. If you count thinking about my job, about how much I don't want to go in, about how I don't want to deal with certain tasks or call about XYZ, then it counts for considerably more. And now that I'm not in school, how much time do I spend pursuing my passion? 5%? 10%? I have no idea. It seems miniscule in comparison to the amount of time that I spend on the job that's supposed to facilitate it. Yet, I don't leave. I don't push myself to audition more. And why? Why don't all of my talented friends do the same? Don't they see how unworthy those jobs are of them? Don't I? Frankly, I think we were all afraid to quit and go full throttle to our destiny because we are scared of how much we are going to shine, of the amount of success that we could achieve. It reminds me of when Nelson Mandela quoted Marianne Williamson in his 1994 inaugural address:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Yet when does this fear manifest? If, as children, we are allowed to shine, when do we start believing that it's okay to dim our lights to make others look good? I look at my youth and I wonder, whom would I hurt if I owned my greatness?
It took a random gathering with my family over Thanksgiving to figure out the cause, or rather, to remember it. My cousins and I were going around in a circle, discussing what we struggle with. When it got to my sister, all of a sudden everyone started complimenting her, telling her that she was so smart and talented, and that they looked up to her during our childhood. I got extremely annoyed. It was like someone flicked my pain body because I was pissed. Fuming. (Not that I would let anyone know.) All of a sudden, it all came rushing back to me. My sister is and was this amazing person. She started reading at 3, she's artistic, she's wicked smart, and everyone fawned over her because of it. Then I came along, was wicked smart and wicked talented, and no one said anything--except whenever I met them, they would tell me how amazing my sister was. My entire life was lived inside the context of my sister. I lived most of my youth in her shadow, until I stopped caring. I just went on with my life, did my own thing, and found my own way. But, now I realize that I stopped trying to be big because I thought I couldn't be bigger or better or brighter than my sister. Or even equal to (which is personally fine with me). That it went against the natural order of things. I spent my youth feeling unacknowledged, so I spend my present not allowing myself to be acknowledged. I thought, "Who am I to shine?"
There is no reason to compare myself to my sister. We are different people. And I can't live my life in the context of her greatness. She also can't live her life in the context of mine. She's allowed to have her own greatness, and I'm allowed to have mine. You see, it's not about out-shining someone, but rather, fulfilling your own path. To go with a Christ metaphor (Merry Christmas), Christ wasn't perfect because He did everything correctly, He was perfect because He followed His path, the path that God laid out for Him. At some point in time, you have to step out of that childish shadow and be brave enough to follow your passion, the passion that God gave you. Which is what I'm doing now.
I realize now that I'm keeping myself from my dreams because I'm afraid to disrupt my so-called natural order, because I'm afraid of living within my own context. So, I quit my job (mostly, I cut my hours so I have some money to live on), and I'm giving myself a month to go full throttle and pursue my dream and audition for 31 days before attempting to find another survival job. Because, however long I've been asking for a way to just live on acting and not have to have a survival job, trying to figure out a way to quit my job or find another, I forgot that I can't do that unless I take the risk and try. I've been spending the past few months re-learning how to let myself shine. And it's catching. I'm finding myself in life conversations with people, and I can feel myself getting brighter, and somehow find myselfinspiring them. Apparently, a lot of people are afraid to shine. They're afraid that if they let themselves be as big as they can be that their relationships with people will change irrevocably. Maybe they will. Most certainly they will. But I have a hard time believing that if I am 100% true to myself and the path that I believe God gave me, than these new relationships, these evolved relationships, won't be deeper and better and stronger and brighter than before. And then I remember my favorite Bible School song, which I am going to leave you with. Please feel free to leave your comments. What you struggle with. Why you're afraid to shine. I'd love to start a dialogue.
Amy Owen | 