I Will Prepare…
Thursday, December 09, 2010
I’ve heard that everyone else knows this fact, however it was indeed news to me. Winston Churchill managed to lose every public election he ever ran in, ultimately of course he grew to be one of the greatest leaders of the UK in all of history. We hear stories of such great people failing over and over, falling flat on their face and at one time or another an object as simple as the lightbulb would never have come into reality, we sit in awe dumbfounded, and to be fair, never actually believing that such great men would be capable of such great and consistent failures. In our heart of hearts many of us say, “After a while of not getting what I was reaching for, I myself would give up.” This is a statement that I hear over and over as I pass over rejection slips in the mail or don’t get a callback that I feel I particularly deserved. The truth is, I can’t give up my dreams, nobody can. Such stories of great men refusing to give up on their’s only supports the drive. If I gave up I would always wonder, what if?
Often we forget the value of preparing, a willingness to be sharpened as tools, ready when we are called upon, for insisting on being prepared for when that day comes. Many years of work, when thankless and filled with little to no success, we forget that in our world that is driven purely on the basis of results and end gains, its that the preparation in many ways is more important than the achievement itself. The act of sharpening a knife over and over again, even when there are weeks or years when its use is not necessary insures that in the end our efforts will not be laid to waste, and in many ways, that preparation will prove more important than our willingness to cut.
Over and over I’ve heard within acting classes as well as when working on my own writing at home that creating works is a ratio of 10% inspiration and 90% luck. The timing of getting ready equals always sharpening those pencils and creating work that may or may not be called upon. So that when your day comes, you are the best tool possible in an industry that has a distinctive need. People tell me over and over that there will never be a use for an actor with a disability, but they forget that the world said the same thing about airplanes, actors of different races, female writers, about a million unforeseen occurrences, which ultimately had to have happened in order for progress not only to be made but also measurable. New needs arise when we are in desperate times or even when we are simply challenged by those days that are going well. Often times it takes years of failures for a person to be able to fulfill that new need exactly when it is needed. More importantly, it indeed takes decades of failures to be able to stand down an abysmal situation, such as a country at war or the night taking over one’s life, and therein refuse to back down from the challenge that seemed self-evident.
I think of these things often as I walk to various classes wondering if my investments in training and education will ever reap a dividend and even, quite possibly mean a profit, I work in an industry that in many ways doesn’t want change. Doesn’t want people to rock the boat, but in many ways this is of course, every industry. Arts and entertainment is no different in seeking stability than banking and law practice. Maybe the day when my vision of the world will be fulfilled will not come in my lifetime, but I know that the best things in the world are built on the backs of people failing and discovering that even amongst these failures there is a grit and determination that is more helpful than such minor successes along the way. The world was made better by those insisting that failure did not necessarily mean game over. These are the men I think of on my way to class day in and day out. I am reminded of them as I prepare for more exercises and move to face the new day, or as Abraham Lincoln (another man to never win a public election) said, “I will prepare, and someday my chance will come.”
Tags: Absurd dreams, angst, faith, future