Never Walked In High Heels

“Dear Athena, thank you so much for the invitation to see you perform at Sadler’s Wells next month. Unfortunately, due to the current conditions of the economy, I feel that I cannot take on any additional clients as it would not be fair to the clients I am currently serving. Thank you again for your invitation. Regards”

Okay. I get it. The economy is bad, really bad actually. The UK and the rest of the world are slowly grinding to a standstill. People are being laid off. The housing market, which dictates so many other seemingly unrelated things, now seems to be everywhere—shooting up one minute and failing the next. It’s rough and nobody likes it. But now it seems that on top of all the other problems, people are actually starting to use the economy as an excuse for everything.

And when I say everything, I mean everything—completely unrelated items such as kicking the dog when you get home, or not considering clients for a potential acting agency. You and your wife got in a fight? Blame the economy. Late for work three days in a row? Well, it’s because the economy is ruining public transportation. Kids not doing well in school? It’s because the economy is so bad that nobody can focus anymore. All these problems are very real and money does affect everything, even corners of our lives that we can’t imagine. But there comes a point in time, where people can only blame their issues on their own choices and not on external problems.

I can appreciate that being an acting agent in London is hard, very hard. So hard in fact, that in the best of times an agent might not come to your show. She’s not interested, or busy, or she has a full roster already. All perfectly acceptable reasons for not coming out to a production. To hide behind conditions when they have nothing to do with the present situation is to ultimately change excuses to consistently avoid the truth. Just say you are unable to make it to the show, or you can’t take any more clients. That reason is actually as acceptable now as it was three years ago.

And the fact is this entire letter is reflective of how we got into the economic mess in the first place. People blaming other people rather than taking action will always lead to disaster be it war, economic downfall, or social upheaval. And then to say that something wouldn’t be, “fair to other clients,” is absurd. Nothing is fair, I get that, and within a certain acting agent’s roster, clients are competing against each other for the same job. Is that fair? But there is a world of difference between a job being inherently competitive (and therefore refined by competitive people) and one that is ground to a halt by a bad economy.

If a man didn’t make the cut for his NCAA college basketball team, would that be blamed on the bad economy as well?

In college when we would go the health center, everything was blamed on a virus. You could go with a broken leg and the nurse would tell you that the broken leg virus has been going around all season. Now it seems we have the bad economy virus. Yes, it is extremely easy to lose both hope and momentum when in a recession, but that is the last thing any of us should want to do. Closing our hands, clenching our fists, and hiding under the bed in fear of what my happen will only serve to make a bad situation infinitely worse. If everyone responded this way how could we ever hope to bring about the level of optimism and opportunity needed to make things better. You’re scared. I’m scared. We’re all terrified as to what may happen, but the truth is that the doors that seem to be closing because of the economic downturn were always difficult to open in the first place. Storms are always hard to weather and challenges come and go. The difference is that Fox News and CNN don’t usually focus on it when you’re terrified. Keep your hands out and open, look for the opportunities that still exist, and take sensible risks. The rules are really the same as always. These include our most basic instinct: Refuse to become paralyzed when everyone else around you is doing just that.