Never Walked In High Heels

My friend is more than happily drunk in the middle of making disparaging socio-economic comments and spouting off some of the most absurd political philosophy I have heard in my life. He spills part of his drink on the floor. We are in an English pub and as per usual, I am witnessing a social debate which would never hold up in practical circumstances. I can tell that everyone is looking at me, expecting me to say something to end the argument. I am notorious for pointing out logical flaws, particularly late at night and when others are inebriated. However I don’t want to say anything and to avoid eye contact, my iPhone is suddenly transformed into the most fascinating object in western civilization.

One of the worst things about having different physical limitations than everyone else (I almost wrote socially abnormal, but then realized that deep down we all fit into such a category) is that you have to work twice as hard to fit in. Growing up, the first two weeks of a new school were always awkward. The first few days the entire class would sit and stare at me in silence as I attempted to answer questions. An icy glaze covered the entire classroom as soon as my hand rose above my head to speak.

First impressions are always important. A visible difference between you and the standard norm, either in physical deformity, disability, or simply the wrong hair color sets everyone’s judgment against you. Suddenly all of the lessons that you learned in kindergarten, the ones about it doesn’t matter what you wear and all that counts is what’s on the inside, no longer apply. Now all that matters is who you are on the outside and how you portray yourself to the outside world. What you wear, how you speak, all contribute to a strangers quick judgments. People often look at me and assume that I have mental limitations as well as physical ones.

In my particular case, this means that there is no room to make mistakes on those first impressions. Growing up, going all through the month of September meant not raising my hand unless I was absolutely positively sure the answer I had was correct. This of course puts an end to most educational ideas. The world around me did not allow mistakes. Later in life this meant not entering an argument until I had reasonable and logical proof to point to. This was translated into refusing to be a hothead in pubs. Such a refusal goes strikingly against my nature. When you have a disability, there is no room to blurt something out without thinking. Doing so runs the risk of people automatically assuming that you are mentally retarded and usually, such an assumption is set against you anyways. Needless to say, all of this severely limits debate involvement while intoxicated and entering into arguments with intoxicated people.

I would like to live in a world that afforded me unreasonable arguments every once in a while. I would like to have an opinion and not have anything to back it up, but just keep it out of sheer pigheadedness. Unfortunately having unbridled opinion is something I can’t admit to having in public which, when I do have stubborn opinions, makes me want to hold them all the more tightly when I am amongst friends who already know that I am not what I fear to be. In an equal world, I would be able to let my guard down, but that has yet to occur. Rather, there are carefully measured times in which I can assert my views without fear of being judged the wrong way and times that I cannot. While this is true for anyone, usually it doesn’t automatically place you in a certain intelligence quota. The bombastic assumptions which are often thrown in my way doesn’t necessarily limit my freedom; my self expression is a choice I will always make. Sometimes I do limit myself by keeping silent and watching someone else actively prove himself a fool.

I was sending my electric chair careening down Tottenham Court Road while in abject anger. My muscles were tense, I was doing everything possible to dodge in and out of pedestrians and not get stuck behind any slow-moving tourists. Having just been told that my disability was going to prevent me from achieving my dreams, I was currently wishing that the instructor I had just left would fall down the stairs of her flat onto the icy pavement below and break a leg that evening if for no other reason than to show her just how frustrating having a condition that was less than ideal was. Then I remembered her crooked back and knobbly hands that were riddled with arthritis. I take a deep breath and slow my wheelchair to a reasonable walking pace, reminding myself that she does know on some level what it is like not to have the perfect body. She can empathize if she chooses to. She knows the frustration of hands which will not obey her brain and feet that shuffle along the floor that used to run when she was a girl. She knows her condition is becoming a chronic illness, and she is terrified. It seemed a little absurd, but I have to constantly remind myself of the frailty of the human condition, even as a person with a disability, an uncooperative body, looking the beast of frailty in the eye. I often forget that bodies break down because, according to some, mine was never built properly to begin with. I forget that, unlike me, most individuals don’t have a history of years struggling with their own physique under their belt by the time their physical capacity begins to deteriorate. I forget all of this and attempt to remember these simple and unalienable facts of life whenever anyone stands in opposition.

Sometimes, even after remembering the state of human affairs I would still like to speed up the process by running over a few toes and making certain people have to use crutches for six weeks just so that they can get a taste of my reality. I once had a high school teacher explain that it was a small kink in human DNA which causes differing characteristics. A tiny microscopic difference between all of us human beings creates so many silly boundaries and absurd demarcations as to what an individual considers normal and fully human and what some people would consider substandard. The most universal thing about the human condition however, is our own vulnerability and the fear that we all have of succumbing to it, but regardless of our level of terror brought about by the idea of opening one’s self wide and being honest about one’s condition, be it mental emotional or physical, inevitably we all find ourselves in vulnerable positions. To have relationships, to accept intellectual risk and encourage progress, just getting on a bike and riding down the street, getting into a car, stepping onto an aircraft, all of these choices, events, are the stuff that life is inevitably made of. Without these, the new ideas, the desire to mobilize ourselves, life would hardly be worth living so we need to accept that sometimes we do make ourselves vulnerable if for anything at all, but to experience life.

The absurdity of it all is that we continue to react negatively when someone does fall victim to their own vulnerability. Perhaps because some conditions such as arthritis, birth defects, and broken limbs are often out of our control. However if a condition is inevitable, what would ever possess us to lash out or entrap the victim of that condition? We wouldn’t think of becoming irritated by a fourteen year old because she menstruated for the first time. Such a change is, after all, is part of the human experience regardless of how awkward it may be. And yet, we often cannot look a person on his deathbed in the eye, much less our friend who was once perfectly able bodied now confined unexpectedly to a wheelchair after being struck down while in prime physical condition because of some ridiculous accident.

My impatience with the people who fall victim to these absurd beliefs , that life is only livable if one has full use of all four of his limbs and is the ideal weight, height, and intelligence comes from such peoples lack of experience. They have yet to learn what it is like to be dependent on other people who have very little in common with themselves. How, when you are hungry and you want a meal, it doesn’t matter what that persons’ skin color, religious or political beliefs are, all that matters is if they are willing and able to prepare hot food when one is considered unsafe in the kitchen. This forced dependency on each other, the ability to serve others unlike ourselves, and be served by individuals who you would never expect service from, it may well be these circumstances that make us vulnerable, and without them, we begin to lose our humanity.

It is one thing for a teacher to assume because of my physical condition I am unlike her and unable to find a place in “her society.” But the fact is, she is much closer to becoming like me than she would like to believe. It is the fact of living that one misread stoplight or piece of poor judgment on anyone’s part, not only our own, can cause us to wake up completely changed, dependent and confined in ways we never thought possible. I suppose in a way it is hard for me to remember that in her stubbornness to deny her flaws and weaknesses. She and I are much more alike than I care to admit.

I never grew up believing in Santa. My parents decided that perpetuating the belief in a man in a red suit coming down the chimney was the equivalent of lying to one’s child. (more strength here, you can’t equivocate the natural conclusion) A certain neighbor of mine had the opposite upbringing. He insists to this day that he believed in Santa Claus until he was twelve years old. When evidence began to point to the contrary, he would do everything possible to deny it and he says he can still remember the day when beyond a shadow of a doubt he was confronted with the truth and could go no further.

I find this story not just adorable but also amusing. This is a man who has now grown up to be a complete atheist, but in his youth insisted over and over in the reality of a figure who is completely unfounded in any truth. Today he claims my view of God is likewise. Perhaps it is the change between my friend when he was age eleven and today, he is thirty seven, that I find so captivating. One thing I do wish my parents, who always asserted that there was nothing redeemable about father Christmas, understood is that for a young person; a belief in Santa Claus exercises his faith muscles. The idea that a man could live who would love everyone and give of himself all year does seem absurd to all of us, regardless of this man choosing to wear a red suit or a crown of thorns. In short, someone who constantly gives is seen to be too good to be true.

In the upper highways that wind around Wisconsin, there was a farm that we would pass routinely. Every year it had a very large wooden cutout of Santa kneeling at the manger and taking his hat off out of respect for the baby Jesus. I remember this decoration vividly as the one that stood out, out of the thousands I saw each year. Looking back I realize it shows that even our fantasies point to a single man of peace.

In many ways, not having the opportunity to believe in Santa Claus didn’t matter. I grew up in a school that was mostly Jewish and had absolutely no use for Father Christmas. When I was older, it was my beliefs that seems fanciful to them rather my peers belief in Santa seeming like wishful thinking to me. Sticking to ones’ beliefs and inevitably tests faith so that we know that if it is something we truly believe or something we were taught. Often times, this stubbornness and belief in beings and ideas despite all the evidence against us separates things into two categories; both too good to be true and those that are so good they must be true.

Those Who Used to “Teach”

It is often said that those who cannot do, teach. And as some members of my family would like to add, those who cannot teach go into education. But embarking on conservatory training I discovered that there are teachers who cannot do and teachers who can no longer do. Both often make splendid teachers. The teachers who have given up there own performing careers due to age or ailment are often times the most giving of their time and the most insistent on perfection, creating a rare combination of encouragement and admirable standards. All too quickly the image of ancient ballet teachers hobbling on canes comes to mind. People who have seen performance for what it is as well have seen their own careers dissolve through circumstances beyond their control and have thus rededicated themselves to improving other individual’s forms rather than other individuals chances to get into the industry.

A particular conservatory instructor comes to mind. He is an individual who was well known in his day as an incredible Shakespearean actor when, after a stage fighting accident during one summer, lost the use of his left arm. That was the only extent of his injury, however it was permanent and as a result of having a single limb immobilized had to give up his craft.

Sometimes I sit in the back of his class listening to him lecture or give advice to those of us performing and I often wonder what he thinks when he examines me in his studio. An injury, which from my perspective seems extraordinarily small (although I’m sure from his point of view, it was anything but negligible) ended his career decades ago and here I am more bound in my body than he is now despite his age, embarking on a professional acting career with the insistence that disability and physical condition does not matter. He, unlike some of my tutors never offers me a detrimental word or insists that I despair regarding my impending doom as a starving artist. His standards are set as high for me as anyone else and he insists that I can be trained.

I look at him lead the class in warm ups and articulation exercises and more often than not, I am struck by the constant reminder of my ultimate goals of being in art. I dream of a world where having an “imperfect body” or being seen as more representative of the human condition. I have a vision of a world where people take as little notice of physical differences as most people do different races and the insistence of segregating the disabled because they are different is labeled as “hateful” as racism or homophobia, and I believe that it is art, particularly acting which will help our society reach these goals as it normalizes differences and forces our world to look at situations and people which many would otherwise not run into living within their own suburban plan. I want to create art and act in pieces that reiterate over and over that losing the use of a single appendage is hardly reason to bow out of the industry and take up teaching as a consolation career when one is regarded some great tragedy occurs.

I sit in his class daily and come to the conclusion that I would hope if the same injury happened to my teacher today, he would keep acting, even in the face of adversity and insist that he belonged on the stage and his talent did not disintegrate as a result of losing the use of a single appendage. I want to help create the world in which he never had to quit due to an accident that was merely an unfortunate circumstance. I can’t help but wonder if, after the accident, he too yearned for a world where art could incorporate the realities of life.

Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked at the road. Clutching the wheel of the car, she said in an almost commanding voice, “Sooner or later something good has to happen to you.” It was one of those conversations which can pretty much only come about during a long car ride when you have no other distractions and no one else keeping you company except for the person sitting next to you. The honesty of such a conversation comes from not being able to look at each other for fear of losing sight of what’s ahead of you and yet being so close that you can still touch. I could feel her frustration as I explained the situation I was in. Her knuckles had gone white from it; that much I could see even out of the corner of my eye and I did not want to take my eyes off the road either.

I’m not sure if the attitude is American or universal but there is no doubt a common misconception that life somehow owes us good times. We are entitled to continuously good turns, and if these are not constant, something must be wrong and someone; either ourselves, God, or some unknown entity must somehow be at fault. This outlook on life is, when anyone starts to think about it, difficult if not impossible to justify. Why do we assume that anything in life is necessarily owed to us, much less something so wonderful and so consistent that it can hardly operate in reality?

My father, for better or worse, considers himself to be a stoic in the most particular sense. As a teenage girl, living with the likes of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius in my own household gave way to a somewhat petulant adolescence. As I get older I find increasingly more and more problems with the stoic philosophy overall. More often than not it leads to an individual lying to himself , presuming that everything is functioning when it is not. Or worse yet, justifying oppression at the insistence that an individual be satisfied no matter what his state. But from my end, such philosophers do make a very valid point. Life is only bearable when an individual consciously decides to make the best of a situation out of choice, even when the entire circumstance is less than desirable. More often than not misery, as well as happiness, can be a willful decision rather than a representation of current circumstances.

Examining the modern world and how it chooses to communicate via mass media advertisements and even entertainment presents that life should be problem free and if something does go wrong it is either somebody’s else’s fault or representative of some great injustice. The rough times and continuous problems are inevitable, but without acknowledging that times are difficult and putting forth the stubborn effort to make the best of a situation, one of two outlooks occurs. The first is that of being overly rosy and sanguine, insisting that everything is behaving exactly as it ought to even when the world around you is constantly falling apart so that denial and consistent lies to ones self serves the ideals of any individual. The second is to look at difficulties in life as not only inevitable but impossible to avoid and create an overly cynical outlook; insisting that such injustice and inequality, difficult times, and distress is how the world ultimately works and there is no hope for betterment. One outlook presents itself as naivety which leads to disappointment; the other is disappointment which ultimately leads to despair. Neither are particularly functional.

It is a perhaps a counter evolutionary effort which causes an individual to see difficulties not only as being flawed and unjustified now, but at the same time keep the willingness to see beyond one’s present state to a better future. The enormous amount of energy needed to sustain such hope and almost absurd belief can only be classified as the willingness to grab life with both hands and not only make the best of what an individual is given to him but also see himself at a place in a specific point in history in which progress is inevitable. This is of course a tall order for any man in today’s age to subscribe to. More often than not we choose the overly optimistic approach, insisting that nothing is wrong in the first place or steeping ourselves in sarcasm and cynicism, insisting that not only do we not deserve our lot in life but that there is nothing that can be done which leads to any sort of peace, rest, and contentment in one’s own life.

My friend on the one hand is correct, something wonderful will happen again in either her life or my own. There is no doubt about it. As of right now, when things are less than ideal, I am willing to look a situation full in the face and label it as the disappointment that it is. But it is up to me to deem it as cruel, bad, or hopeless. We want to deny the fact but much of life, even the situations which we consider joyful of brilliant is difficulty and discomfort. The rest of life are the good things I bring to myself by choosing to see life for what it is in it’s present state, and also insisting on dwelling in the possibility of what life could be.

There is one t-shirt in my wardrobe that I always make sure to set aside and wash myself in the coldest water possible. Despite being over 25 years old, it is still bright gold and the emblem blazes in front of it in that vaguely rustic vintage attempt to look cool which somehow always works. It fits me perfectly, which is ironic because in about 1978, it was my father’s, then it was my mother’s, and now it is mine. I started wearing it more so when I went away to college because both of my parents wore the exact same shirt during their college years. Somehow it feels fitting and because of its connection to both of my parents, it is without a doubt my favorite t-shirt. They wore it for years before I ever came along, having their own visions of what they hoped their future would hold; visions of family and multiple children, dreams of owning a farm somewhere and creating specialty food stuff that usually it takes a 22 year old to be crazy enough to dream up. They no doubt envisioned their ideal life as they were dating and heading towards marriage with the same optimism that I now have for my life.

The shirt itself has a Jesus fish on it and a Greek word meaning “Christ” written underneath as the emblem. It came from a sort of campus outreach group that was meant to find students looking for a new faith in life and show them what Christian love and hospitality looked like. In many ways, people still consider colleges the greatest mission field in America, and students that belong to such groups are supposed to have faith, goodness and values no matter what. In college, combined with the right amount of religion and reading the right books and just the right amount of sunny days lying on the quad we are able to find our dream and a certain optimistic happiness that once we graduate, the world will be ours and everything will turn out okay. That sort of faith is of course more difficult to hold on to. Like an old t-shirt, it becomes just a little more frayed around the edges every time it goes into the wash and every time anyone throws it in the machine I always wonder if the shirt will survive and if my faith will survive another crisis. The same thing can be said about keeping faith in life as can be said about wearing my parents old t-shirt. Every time it’s up for a good hard washing, I clench my teeth a bit praying that it doesn’t disintegrate in the dryer. Somehow it doesn’t, it always comes out feeling a bit more comfortable.

Sometimes being stretched and run under water, weighted down, and bumping into life with it’s many stains causes material to fall apart which we always assumed would hold together in the first place, but ultimately the young keep on dreaming about what their life will be like and there will be generations pass down their well worn faith and security in hopes that it will serve their children well And somehow the dreams of youth never quite come out in the wash.

Recently it was my birthday, and I started to think about what it was I wanted out of life during my tenth birthday. I don’t know why, but being a ten year old always seemed to be a special time for me, like it was the prime of childhood. All the books I read and movies I watched growing up, with characters I admired always seemed to be ten year old girls finding secret places that were especially their own. I looked back to a diary I kept during those days to see what exactly what I wanted. See, I believe that each of us are built with desires and dreams imprinted in our hearts. These imprints When we are young and unaware of the challenges set before us. This is when we are most aware of what it is we were meant to accomplish. As we get older, and things change, then our dreams becomes less simple and we substitute what we were meant to do for what the world expects us to do.

A while back I lost a friend who informed under no uncertain terms that my aims in life were “unrealistic” and “It’s time for you to grow up anyway.” And it’s true, any dream you have as a young woman with a disability today is still highly unrealistic. There is no job field I can enter at this point with no typing skills and manual labor being next to impossible, where my lifetime career would be simple, straightforward, and predictable. Add to the fact that I work in the arts and the entertainment industry is one of the most shallow industries in existence and you have a road map for someone trying to reach the moon without a rocket ship. He didn’t know it at the time I don’t think, but what my friend was asking me to do was to deny my dreams simply because the world wasn’t ready for them. Is unpreparedness ever a good reason to move on, particularly when it’s unpreparedness not on your behalf but on the behalf of the rest of the world? Would it be appropriate for an African-American fifty years ago to say that wanting to get a graduate school education at an institution like Vanderbilt was not a worthwhile dream simply because the school was located in an area that was still full of racial tension? Are we morally obligated to change our ambitions just because they might be difficult to reach or impossible given the current state of our society?

If someone has a family that is dependent on them or other obligations, certain sacrifices must be made, particularly when it comes to earning a living. But those of us who are able to get by and still repeatedly try to break down the walls we choose to demolish might not necessarily have the sociological standard course of action. After all, if no one breaks down the walls that are obstacles in our own culture, they will never come down on their own accord. Rather, they will stay as imposing obstacles waiting for someone in the next generation to tear them down. And so, walls are made until someone is determined to make an explosion and carry through with the demolition process fully.

Dreams are by nature just out of reach, and if they were easy to grasp and lasso down to the floor, would they be worthwhile dreams or just perpetuating the status quo. It is never acceptable to pass on your dreams simply because they are too difficult to accomplish. Difficulty is never a strong enough reason to quit anything.

There was a time when I was very very small, and I did not realize the limitations plastered on the wall. What I did realize was what my dreams were. At about the same age, I would go to sleep and not understand that the things I did after I went to bed and the images that came across my mind were not reality. The next morning I would ask my mom if she remembered flying over the moon with me or dancing with flowers on fairy dust patches. She would look at me and say “That didn’t happen, you dreamed it. It was a dream.” But it all felt so real to me, even after I woke up safely in my bed.

On the one hand, you don’t know which of your dreams will come true or not. None of us ever do. But often the most earth shattering dreams are the ones which most people cannot see and therefore assume to be impossible.

I didn’t really have girlfriends until college. In high school I was far too busy and in many ways, far too miserable to trust anyone with my deepest darkest secrets. So it wasn’t until I went away to get a university education that I knew the magic of staying up late with popcorn and movies, sneaking scandalously when the boys were nowhere around, and enjoying a really good margarita. A girlfriend is someone you can not only do all these things with, but also allow yourself to let your guard down and allow yourself to be as girly, silly, and even scandalous with in ways that you would never do so in public company. After college we went our separate ways and now that I am a bit older, I’m realizing that it’s difficult to find new girlfriends.

Everything about a young woman’s world tells her to turn inwards. We go from spending Saturday nights at sleepovers or with cocktails and DVD’s to dates with a single guy that no one else is invited to. If we are lucky enough to fall in love and get married, the focus shifts from keeping up with our girlfriends to setting up a home and balancing the new adventures of living together while making ends meet and maintaining a career. Then inevitably come the children or the additional workload or both. Men get to go to pubs and have time together in which they drink and throw darts, but for women what exactly is a girl’s night out? Older girls will sometimes invite each other to what they call “girl’s night in” where they paint their nails and wear pink; having slumber parties that remind you of the teenage years. Men don’t need to be reminded of their teenage years; they never lost the ability to have “guy time.” But as women we go backwards, turning into the ultimate giggly girls and watching reruns of Sex and the City in order to feel not quite so juvenile. None of this is for me, I’m afraid.

Even if you fall in love with a soul mate and marry him, he will never be a girlfriend. Girlfriends watch each other grow up and listen to each other as they share insecurities about sex, child raising, hormones, all the little details in life that you wouldn’t dare tell anyone else. The world encourages girlfriends which are unreasonable; irresponsible even, spending money on clothes and unnecessary knick knacks. Being superficial and silly all the time shrinks the value of a true girlfriend until she is replaced by the faux girlfriend who is obsessed with a combination of men and handbags while having all their conversations over cosmopolitans. For those people who only have the “faux girlfriend”; the fake girlfriend, I often wonder what they would do with the problems that broadside me on 2 a.m on a Thursday.

Truth is, all my girlfriends have sprawled out over the globe and perhaps because of the distance, we have been forced to stick close to each other. More often than not, we make accidental phone calls to one another at two o’ clock in the morning, forgetting the difference in times zones. Sometimes those middle of the night phone calls carry the most urgent news and the deepest desire for a friend; not a husband, not a mother, but a girlfriend to listen to the situation. When the 2 a.m. phone calls are by accident, we bolt out of bed anyways, excited to talk to one another at last. And when the 2 a.m.’s come with an urgent need, we are quite used to disturbing our beauty rest and having a conversation with the people we value the most. Like anything rare, when a girlfriend passes by, you can’t help but drop what you are doing to see if she needs anything on her way.

Trying Too Hard

When my grandfather entered into my room and saw me working on my biology homework for the third late night in a row, he said something that I’m pretty sure had never crossed his lips in his life, “Sweetie, maybe you are trying too hard.” Flash forward ten years later and I am in an acting class; the older woman who leads us reminds me of all the good witches in fairytales that I had read. She is looking at me and commenting on the work I have done saying, “The problem is not your effort; the problem is your work is inhibited by the fact that you are trying too hard.”

Growing up we are told to do to whatever we can to be the very best. We are taught to attempt difficult math problems and other various paths, even if it would require a special effort. We are told in short, to try hard. But at what point is attempting something with too much effort destructive? At what point does trying hard prevent an individual from learning because he is so focused on his effort rather than the subject at hand?

Acting teachers are notorious for saying, “try not to try.” This of course is misleading. As an actor, it is our job to do the homework and invest in the character to the best of our ability and then let go so allowing the muse take over and create something more powerful and true than can be achieved by “trying” in front of the bedroom mirror. There comes a point in time when a bird has to fly and it becomes practical knowledge rather than theoretical.

I have been known to try so hard that people tell me I’m wasting energy, and in some instances they are right, due to the nature of my disability people often tell me that doing X or Y will be extremely difficult and so I believe them and start straining away to make something fit. As a result, there are all sorts of extraneous movements and energies and shutters that go off which an able-bodied person would never have in his vocabulary of smooth motions. I am guilty of trying so hard to make something work, but my own muscles get in my body’s way. In short, my disability makes it impossible to weed out the superlatives of moving.

In life, unfocused energy is an absolute plague, particularly in suburban America. We literally spend all the energy we have attempting to make a round peg fit into a square hole. Relationships, class schedules, commitments that we are not quite ready for, at a certain point in our life become lost effort. You see a boy you like in class, and you end up molding everything you say and do in order to attract him. But of course, ultimately, he was never attracted to you in the first place. A complete loss of energy, for one, forced kiss.

We are, I have no doubt, meant to work hard, but that’s not the same as trying to make things more difficult than they were actually meant to be in the first place. When this happens, we ultimately force ourselves to attempt to control what may well be out of our control, or better off not being manipulated at all. It’s a risk, but sometimes letting go of things rather than ramming one’s head against the same wall over and over is the way towards a happy ending.

In that particular instance, I think my grandfather was wrong, and I think my acting teacher was correct. We are supposed to work hard in school; education and training are supposed to stretch us. He knew that and looking back, as surprising as his statement to me actually was, he would have never agreed about slacking off in science class. I often think of his words that night, when I am working hard and finding my energy quickly sapped, reminding myself that working too hard should never be confused, with trying too hard.

When my grandfather entered into my room and saw me working on my biology homework for the third late night in a row, he said something that I’m pretty sure had never crossed his lips in his life, “Sweetie, maybe you are trying too hard.” Flash forward ten years later and I am in an acting class; the older woman who leads us reminds me of all the good witches in fairytales that I had read. She is looking at me and commenting on the work I have done saying, “The problem is not your effort; the problem is your work is inhibited by the fact that you are trying too hard.”

Growing up we are told to do to whatever we can to be the very best. We are taught to attempt difficult math problems and other various paths, even if it would require a special effort. We are told in short, to try hard. But at what point is attempting something with too much effort destructive? At what point does trying hard prevent an individual from learning because he is so focused on his effort rather than the subject at hand?

Acting teachers are notorious for saying, “try not to try.” This of course is misleading. As an actor, it is our job to do the homework and invest in the character to the best of our ability and then let go so allowing the muse take over and create something more powerful and true than can be achieved by “trying” in front of the bedroom mirror. There comes a point in time when a bird has to fly and it becomes practical knowledge rather than theoretical.

I have been known to try so hard that people tell me I’m wasting energy, and in some instances they are right, due to the nature of my disability people often tell me that doing X or Y will be extremely difficult and so I believe them and start straining away to make something fit. As a result, there are all sorts of extraneous movements and energies and shutters that go off which an able-bodied person would never have in his vocabulary of smooth motions. I am guilty of trying so hard to make something work, but my own muscles get in my body’s way. In short, my disability makes it impossible to weed out the superlatives of moving.

In life, unfocused energy is an absolute plague, particularly in suburban America. We literally spend all the energy we have attempting to make a round peg fit into a square hole. Relationships, class schedules, commitments that we are not quite ready for, at a certain point in our life become lost effort. You see a boy you like in class, and you end up molding everything you say and do in order to attract him. But of course, ultimately, he was never attracted to you in the first place. A complete loss of energy, for one, forced kiss.

We are, I have no doubt, meant to work hard, but that’s not the same as trying to make things more difficult than they were actually meant to be in the first place. When this happens, we ultimately force ourselves to attempt to control what may well be out of our control, or better off not being manipulated at all. It’s a risk, but sometimes letting go of things rather than ramming one’s head against the same wall over and over is the way towards a happy ending.

In that particular instance, I think my grandfather was wrong, and I think my acting teacher was correct. We are supposed to work hard in school; education and training are supposed to stretch us. He knew that and looking back, as surprising as his statement to me actually was, he would have never agreed about slacking off in science class. I often think of his words that night, when I am working hard and finding my energy quickly sapped, reminding myself that working too hard should never be confused, with trying too hard.

I had a friend who became unexpectedly pregnant in between her junior and senior year at university. I was a year above her and had no idea of the situation until I was sent a picture of the child shortly after it was born. It was beautiful but shocking to think that a friend of mine was now able to replicate herself. She was ahead in her class credit, so took a semester off to go through the pregnancy as well as completing summer school the summer before her graduation. She graduated on time and realistically with a better plan than any of us had at the time we walked across the stage. Another friend of mine within three weeks of each other discovered that two of her sisters had also become pregnant out of wedlock. Her family is extremely conservative and were shocked as well as embarrassed by the entire situation. The amount of angst and anger which was brought on as a result of two new babies was in many ways surprising and not particularly loving.

The thing about families is it’s become a cliché; there is no such thing as a “normal” family. However to take it a step further, families in order to function (as opposed to simply being normal) are based around forgiveness. You have to forgive the people in life that you are stuck with. Normal people find it very difficult to turn the other cheek and move on. But unlike what most people would do given the chance, functional families are able to react with more love to these sort of situations and problems simply because if you are in a family together, you are stuck with each other for the rest of your lives. Run away as far as possible and they are still genetically connected to you so you might as well get used to it and recognize that their faults are probably pretty similar to your own, or at the very least, as difficult for other people to handle.

The love of families represents the type of love and commitment, as well as sacrifice, we are supposed to show to just about everyone else in the world. But by nature you are dedicated to finding the very best for your family; this is natural instinct. I’ve known families who moved into houses without furniture just so there children could attend a particularly brilliant school district. The stories abound about mothers who discover that their children are violin prodigies and then take night shifts in order to pay for lessons which cost a days wages.

There are no normal families. Ideally, we should be able to find a balance of what is good for the people that are blood related to us, whether it be stretching our boundaries of forgiveness to accept the prodigal son back one more time or simply forgetting about the fact that he didn’t take the trash out yet again. We have to learn to afford each others grace and hopefully begin to expand that talent of giving grace out into other parts of the world until other people who aren’t necessarily related to you by blood receive that type of love and sacrifice from you. A family teaches us to accept and tolerate people as they are. Whereas we would normally walk away from friends who hurt us in the same way our family does, there is no escaping the memories of growing up together and the good times.

When I told someone of my friends original plan to have the baby and then continue on with her job in the middle-east while being a single mother and waiting for the father to get out of medical school, they replied “That sounds like a stable solution, but it’s still a bizarre and improper way to start a family.” And in a way, they are right. It is bizarre and it doesn’t go by traditions, but in the end, what we accept from our loved ones is exactly that: bizarre and unexpected. One might as well acknowledge its strangeness at the start of establishing a family.