Gift of the Magi

"If you want to be an actor, act."

This sage advice was given me when I was about 22 or 23, and I adopted it as my mantra thereafter. It was in response to me dithering over going to graduate school to study theater, a choice I deliberately did not make right out of undergrad because I didn't have the money, I didn't have the encouragement, and I didn't want to be in school anymore for a while, and it justified my path. I needed a break, I thought; I planned to take a year or two to work and that thereafter I would return to the world of scholarly pursuits.That year or two stretched into years three to eight post-grad, which is when I decided that I was being ridiculous and that it was high time to get back to doing what I did best by going to school for a master's and then having the skills and qualifications on paper and in deed in order to make a go of life in a permanently creative way. So I got off my corporate America arse and found a program that was right for me at that time, did all the testing and applying and auditioning, and was rewarded with a full scholarship. Somewhere between applying and the free ride offer, life as I knew it fell apart and I eventually decided that despite the years of procrastinating and planning and productive making this finally happen, I was no longer in a position emotionally or financially ior physically to sail into that brave new world, so I turned it down.

Fast-forward to another almost-eighth year after that last major decision and I find myself very ill-at-ease with the one thing I have always known about myself--that acting is what I do, first and foremost, everything and sometimes nearly everyone else be damned.

"Why not the path to acting."

More sage advice that has always stuck with me, this piece offered while I was still an undergrad student, dithering about what I was meant to do in life post-B.A. degree because I liked so many things, I was good at a fair number of them, and I was having an existential crisis of faith to boot. It was the first time I ever felt fully encouraged to do what it was I had always felt I was meant to do because it was the first time anyone put it to me that this was a calling and thus carried with it all the solemnity and holiness as a religious experience would. This was who I was and all the twisting and turning and trying to fashion myself into someone else just to please any given person at any given time wasn't going to change that.

Fifteen years after that and I find myself wondering if the struggle I am undergoing has less to do with the wisdom of this path I have indeed chosen and more to do with the reality of choosing a path in the first place. It isn't supposed to be easy to live by the courage of one's convictions; faith is one thing that is hard to believe in.

"You are quite good. You should be doing this stuff all over the place."

I think of myself twenty years ago, a very busy high school student who would spend hours of free time poring over plays and memorizing parts from the canon of American playwrights. I was patient; I never had a doubt that eventually I would play the ever-growing list of parts I was keeping in my bedside drawer, even though I had never really acted in anything. And it was one of the first days of my sophomore year in high school that I found my first mentor, the first person who didn't laugh at my ambitions, someone who simply accepted that I was talented and ought to be in pictures, so to speak. This encouragement fed me like manna from the heavens. I read more, memorized more, took silly small parts in overblown high school productions, and longed for college when I could do whatever I wanted free from the constraints of home.

So where is that passion now? Lately I feel very badly about what I always thought I did best. Suddenly there are roadblocks all over the path--and I didn't put them all there. And I am very very very scared that what nourishes me has destroyed me, and that it didn't really nourish me very well to begin with for such an end. I hope it is just a phase. But currently I feel lost and confused and just sad about it--that I am washed up or over or simply stayed down too long in certain circles and have lost my edge, my sparkle, my ME. And I worry that the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrhh annointed to me by the three wise men above have been squandered unwittingly.