Never Walked In High Heels

By the time I put her on the plane, I had no idea how I was going to survive without my friend. A s.n.a.f.u at immigration put a friend who came to visit me on holiday back in the US for another six weeks. Thus all my plans for companionship, a friend to lend an extra hand, and not having to come home to an empty house, were thwarted.

At the same time, my long time assistant was moving out, leaving me very little time to find someone new to cook, clean, feed me my meals, and help with other minor but much needed tasks. Then, in a moment of divine irony, an email came through my inbox with the subject heading “What feeds you?” The gods were laughing.

The most difficult thing about my disability is that, even well into adulthood, I cannot make a meal or feed it to myself. All other aspects of life in a wheelchair I’ve just about been able to wrap my head around. I wear shoes which I never have to tie, I get my hair washed by a salon, I’m even quite good at flirting in pubs so I can get guys to help me walk down the stairs to visit the toilets. But all of this requires calories to burn, which in turn requires the intake of food, which is one area of my life that I have zero control over. Having to depend on others for food is like a country having to depend on OPEC for energy, sooner or later everyone else has you over a barrel.

I once heard a homeless woman being interviewed remark that the hardest thing about being in her position was not knowing where her next meal was coming from. Although I am far from being homeless, I know exactly how terrifying that feels. It is a kind of poverty which is not dictated by the wallet or by some stockpile of faith. At least three times a week there comes a point where I have no idea when or how I’m going to eat again and unless I’m willing to put some pieces together, I have no idea how that can possibly change. My last meal could quite possibly be exactly what it sounds like.

There’s about as many differing definitions for the word poverty as there are organizations set up to work towards its end. In my flat in London I’ve never dared to think of myself as being impoverished. But, after my curiosity being peaked and doing a little research, I realized that every single one of these definitions mentioned a lack of what is essential for survival. Does the fact that I have gone multiple days without food put me on the edge of the poverty line, even while I sit in a riverside flat trying to figure out the next alternative for food? Or perhaps this simply makes me a bad planner.

No parent wants his children to grow up not knowing where their next meal is coming from. For that matter no parent wants to see his child lack in anything. If the certainty of a next meal is the minimum standard for successful parenting, then my mother and father failed miserably. And yet the wealth of what they could give me allows me to survive in a world where nothing is guaranteed, even my next meal.

If poverty, as some organizations such as the UN defines it, is simply the lacking of a necessity in life, then we are all impoverished in one form or another. And in many cases it is the “wealthiest” amongst us who are actually the most impoverished. The myth of an independent and self sufficient life, reflected in even these definitions of poverty, not only perpetuates a misconception but also actively pulls us away from relationships of interdependence. If we are loved, we may not know where the next meal is coming from, but we do know those around us will not let us starve. Someone will notice, someone will help, provided we are willing to show our blatant vulnerability freely, and admit we are all lacking in something which is needed to survive this difficult task called living.

Looking back to the times I’ve been without food, without help, temporarily impoverished as it were, much of it has been due to my own stubbornness and unwillingness to admit to my own need. I am not saying that doing so would wipe out poverty or all hungry people would have their problems solved if they simply admitted they needed help. My disability does not go away simply because I have the assistance I need. The fact I am being fed does not negate the fact I cannot feed myself anymore than the fact a homeless man has a bed for the night negate the fact that he is, indeed, homeless. But we are lying to ourselves if we do not admit that each of us are in need of something which makes life livable.

I cannot feed myself and that’s awful. More days than I care to count I’ve spent vast stores of energy trying to figure out where my next meal is coming from. By some standards this would label me as being ‘impoverished.’ But it is what we lack as well as our excesses which make us interact and inspire life into each other when no other solution would allow us to maintain momentum. I am unable to eat on my own and the solution to this problem means I have a wealth of dinner dates and friends to meet for coffee who tell me that I feed them as much as they feed me. Usually I do a pretty good job lining up these appointments 3 times a day to ensure I do not go hungry. On the days that this fails, I am forced to admit my weakness rather than letting it be implicit. I am forced to call someone and say “I need help.” And I am forced to admit that with the number of people who love me enough to come to my aide, I am far from being impoverished.

The girl next to me was crying so hard that snot was coming out of her nose. I didn’t know it was possible to be next to someone who was sobbing so hard and yet feel absolutely nothing. Our director and leader of the course, I felt, had manipulated us all into this dramatic situation. For weeks she had been going on and on about how terrifying an impending environmental crisis would be, and that the government and news outlets had yet to report the “real” event that they knew was approaching. She warned the class that it would upset us all, therefore she would not tell us and then today after lunch she decided that she would tell us if we would vote unanimously that that is what we wanted to hear. I really didn’t care, but being the last person to vote out loud I said that I wouldn’t mind hearing it either. Within five minutes the girl next to me was in tears out of full, unadulterated fear about our impending doom which of course to her, would come in the next decade.

She was in one of those situations where she was afraid of not knowing the truth and yet horrified to learn about it. And so, she would remark later, she went home terrified, analyzing how her life would change should the economy collapse and clean water become impossible to find. She was shaking as she packed up her books, got on the tube and went to lie down in her own bed at home. Of course, on this particular day the sun was shining and the birds were singing. There was nothing to fear. That is how panic works. The nature of panic comes at its finest when there is nothing, absolutely nothing to be afraid of. It comes in and paralyzes us all so that even the daily tasks of getting out of bed in the morning become mountains to climb.

When panic comes into play we all stop thinking, which of course is the absolute worst thing possible to do. It is the equivalent of taking our hands off the wheel when we run across a patch of black ice while driving down the motorway. We stop thinking. We go into what is commonly known as “survival mode.”

Of course in our society today there are entire industries built on keeping panic alive within the population. One needs only to look towards journalism to see this, the health industry, the safety industry, the insurance industry. All of these different services are in and of themselves good. But they have figured out that if they keep people running around attempting to prevent one disaster after the next by constantly feeding them such a constant source of panic, its better for their industry in general. Who would not want to keep their family and loved one’s safe? Who would want to, after a disaster say, I should have bought X and Y and then all of our lives could have been saved. But its the equivalent of having one of those extremely draining friends who always need a crisis to be dealing with in order to make life interesting and so they flit, creating crises, squabbles, panic from one person to the next in order to ensure their survival and to keep themselves dependent on other people.

Inevitably, when we listen to the news broadcasts, the insurance commercial, read the health & safety pamphlets, we all fall for it. As if this world were at one time blissful and perfect, now needs us to be alert to all the dangers out there. The world was never without danger, there has always been some disaster looming on the horizon and sometimes unfortunately coming straight to our front door. Perhaps I can say this because in my own life, I have never known it to be anything else. In my own life I could see that once one battle is fought, another one will come, so forth and so on.

There finally came a time for me that I had been scared for so long, afraid of what school administrators might do next, what discrimination I would next encounter, what friend would get the next form of meningitis that able bodied people were not susceptible to. Eventually the panic wore off and I became immune. Realizing that this life, as uncomfortable as it often was, is what my life is going to be like. I might as well get used to that fact instead of succumbing to panic and not allowing anyone else to feed such paralysis.

It is the nature of panic to put blinders on. Permitting only a limited and self-centered view of the world. It is impractical, and more often than not succumbing to panic works its way into allowing room for a crisis to take over. Perhaps it is because I am a person of faith that I have generally accepted from day one, that the world will end. That is how my parents taught me, and so ironically, when we talk about the end of the world in classrooms and in debates, I feel nothing. Simply…happy that someday it will all be gone and perhaps there will be nothing or perhaps there will be something better to take its place. But that better option will never come, the improvements will never be seen and the joy we all long for will never be created if we succumb to panic.

It is a typical question my parents ask of me at about this time. The family letters go out mostly to people I have never met although heard about in stories from their time in grad school or law school, and in return we get pictures of new babies and blushing brides. It is without a doubt the Christmas card season, which in recent years has mostly been re-dubbed the Christmas letter season. The time of year where you attempt, usually in vain, trying to figure out the mail merge function on Microsoft word just to add a personal touch to a general form letter, thus making it look like you wrote the letter for a specific recipient all along. For the sake of our letter, if anything, I have been working on “This School Year,” I hadn’t thought of my life in terms of school years and grading terms for ages, thus reminding me how little structure and accountability I have in my life as it currently stands. And to be honest, I couldn’t think of a way to sum up my entire existence in one simple line. What was I working on? Part of me didn’t even know.

All of a sudden I feel an enormous rush to justify my self-existence. I want to find a masters program to enroll in, some sort of regime that I cant point to and say “See that? This year I am doing that.” But that is the nature of having a creative life. My life doesn’t fit into scheduled time tables. Some of my most important work happens between the hours of 9 o’clock and 12 o’clock at night. A friend once told me that being an artist is as much a life style choice as it is vocational decision.

He explained that his 30th birthday was spent cleaning toilets and living on the dole and that two years previous, when he was twenty-eight, his birthday was spent sipping champagne and eating strawberries. Being an artist means that you can fall down the ladder as quickly as you can climb up it. The structure and security is completely gone.

I’m sure, regardless of whatever my parents write, many of those who read the Christmas letter will think that I somehow managed to fail them. Growing up I was your typical success story: straight A student, never veering off course, the front row adolescent who’s mind was full of questions and never entertained rebellion. They used to tell my parents, “She’s going places. She’ll be great at whatever she does. I can’t wait to see her in the future.” And right now at least, all I’m great at is provoking a lot of instability in my own life.

By nature of my condition, much of my life has been spent with a sort of warped view of time.  When you are disabled, time slows down and success is largely relative for a kid who was never meant to live much further than her first evening. This means that growing up, taking your first steps at age ten, waiting until fifteen to attempt to ride a bike, still being unable to tie one’s own shoes, and even today, I must find great significance in even the smallest victories. As I wait, often overwhelmed by rejection and closed doors, I am forced to answer myself with regards to whom I’m writing and performing for. When I discover the answer, even the rehearsed readings and showings that occur inside an acting classroom become as important as any opening night on a West End stage.

My life, scattered as it is, has become impossible to sum up in a single letter, much less in a single sentence contained in a letter. I figured this out for myself my first year out of college when I attempted to write my own Christmas letters from the UK. All I could do was write each one out by hand and fill it with questions about the life of the recipient. This took pages and failed to pinpoint exactly what in my life I was accomplishing.

People who only know me by Christmas letters can’t really begin to understand what I am up to, so even a ten page letter I think, would illustrate that really I don’t know what I’m up to and perhaps my incompetency at running my own life would only be barely shown within a ream of paper. Nonetheless my parents pressured me to come up with anything to explain to relatives.  It’s not that my parents don’t love me or they don’t understand, its that they are at a loss to explain what’s going on. Sometimes I tease them, “Tell them that I am one of those people who change the digital clocks on banks every year during daylight savings time. That will illustrate some sort of stable success.” People remain unamused by this answer, looking for a simple one line statement of what I’m up to.

Most of all, I wish my parents just to tell their friends that I am well. Because I am well.

As soon as I saw him across the acting studio, something inside my brain said, “Steer clear, this one will break your heart, he is bad news.” The other side of my brain said, “Don’t be so judgmental, he hasn’t even opened his mouth yet. Give him a break.” So I got to know him anyway and we became friends over the course of a month and then a year later I discovered that the original alarm that had gone off inside my head was actually right.

We are told over and over again that one cannot judge a book by its cover but yet every once in a while a definite siren goes off in our heads and we are told very loudly that pre-judging someone is what we should be doing in order to steer clear of a massive problem. Certain signs we don’t consciously, notice and so we cant really justify why this sudden onset and strange feeling appears. Yet our subconscious sees them and the lights inevitably start flashing despite us having no proof. To discount those flashing lights is exactly what we are taught over and over that we are not supposed to do, “Don’t be judgmental, wait and let people show themselves according to their actions. Wait and love everyone regardless of how much your mind is unjustifiably screaming out ‘this is a really bad idea’”

Don’t get me wrong. I am, if anybody, the victim of first judgments. Often I wonder if people are incapable of hiding their first judgments as they speak to me as if my mental capacity was evident simply by observing my physical condition (this in turn gives me plenty of opportunity to judge them as I find that such an introduction is proof enough of action, but that’s beside the point) and we refuse everything only to say in the end, “We should have gone with our guts.”

What is the difference between a gut instinct and prejudice or a pre-judgment. I’m not really sure. Perhaps it’s only when you realize you were right all the time that you dare to call it a gut instinct, and if you are wrong or coming up with bad explanations, the world cries prejudice. Perhaps the difference is how hard one is willing to work against that instinct and how hurt one willing to be because that willful ignorance. Perhaps it is an item that only time will act as the great proof.

But I am learning, or at least trying to learn, to take those subtle voices inside my mind which do not come from a clear source, a little more seriously. Perhaps it’s a vain science experiment on my part to see how much of a soothsayer I can be. But in the end, I want to be able to look back and say “I went with my gut,” even if my gut was horribly horribly wrong. In my experience there is little worse than saying I ignored my gut and thus walked into a situation where my instincts told me I had no business. If I was warned internally that there would be trouble, it doesn’t matter how open or socially correct I was trying to be. There is no one to blame but myself.

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.

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.

When I was little, I used to love when summer was finally winding down. In June I would come home from school crying and asking, “What will I do for three whole months without school?” Back then, life followed a plan and June/July/August represented a purposeful part of that plan. Worse yet, the rhythms of the year were definite. September meant new shoes and colored pencils as I was heading back to school. Then came Christmas, Valentines Day, and when I was just beginning to give up hope, came the dreaded three months without school. Now that I have twelve months a year without school, I’m not exactly sure what the end of summer means anymore.

The truth is, without consistently being in a classroom with the dates splashed on the bulletin board, I have difficulty telling what time of year it is anymore. The holidays marked by paper cutouts with snowflakes and candy canes stapled to the wall come and go without much recognition in my own life. There aren’t spring themed words or seasonal linear graphs that turn out to be in the shape of Santa Claus. Now the months just slip by and I am surprised on October 31^st, my doorbell rings and there are children asking for candy.

This of course is the crux of the change from childhood into independent adulthood. Your life is no longer well defined. You don’t have guide posts and deadlines to set. Grades, when you are a child, are a form of currency so that your first year out of college one can’t help but be a little bit confused when they hold cash in their hand rather than a report card. There is no rhythm to the seasons; there is no plan in what you are doing in your life and perhaps most disturbingly, there are no awards for perfect attendance.

If you are working in one of the creative fields such as a visual artist, actor, or writer, the situation is even worse. The days slip through your fingers as quickly as water until you realize you have spent the entire day looking at a blank computer screen and only managed to type out a few words. Here in this adult life, one is forced to quantify oneself not by merit or test grades, but by inner thoughts and actions. It’s the conversations that an individual has with themselves and the results thereof to give you an idea of their self worth. The rest of the world’s actions are justified by paychecks. When someone is an actress or writer, there is no such thing as regular paycheck and so the end of summer. As I continue to go to auditions and look at my blank screen while attempting to figure out what comes next.

Were it not for a gradual shift in weather, needing my jacket at night, pulling out the fall fashions and looking longingly through catalogues, I might not even notice the shift in seasons. This is one of the many reasons why I consider it a blessing to live in a place that has winter, spring, summer, and fall. For me the end of summer doesn’t mean the end of free time. As much as I miss the rhythm and cadence that comes from the school year, the product of it is actually a huge blessing. Western education teachers say money is the most precious form of currency, it does nothing to acknowledge the expensive nature of the economics of time, health, and happiness. I will continue to work on whatever, even if the year is ebbing away unnoticed. Nothing reminds me of that blessing now, more than the end of summer.

Last week I was watching my next door neighbor head off to her first day of school; her bright pink backpack and pigtails almost made the entire image look like a cliché rather than real life. Even though I swore I never would be, I was slightly jealous of her returning to the structure that comes at this time of year. But most of all, I was jealous of all the discoveries that lay ahead of her within her own time.

As a performer I often have to force myself to watch things that are immensely popular despite the fact that I hate them. I am at home today watching the entire first season of Glee; and truth be told, I can’t stand it. To me all I can see is a bunch of teenagers encouraging America to continue with bad theatre and poor acting habits. So many amateur thespians in America think that the apex of acting comes when you can smile big and sing loudly on cue, which only perpetuates those poor habits and generally bad theatre.

As I am watching, one of the teachers said to the students “Adults have to make difficult choices.” The tone in which he says it is pejorative at best. Adults have to make difficult choices? What about high schoolers? Don’t they have difficult decisions. When I was in high school, I was never able to have the world revolve around who I was interested in dating or what the cheerleaders were doing that Saturday night. A typical day in high school consisted of me putting on a three-piece suit and carrying a suitcase; worrying about making grades that were high enough that I wouldn’t be sent back into special education classes due to an over-controlling teacher who insisted that all students with disabilities be taught solely by her. Every “B” I received on an exam was a sign for red alert; and often I chose between sleep I needed to make it to the next day and putting in that extra four hours on an English paper when I was only able to type at an alarmingly slow rate. Teachers supported me, and often ran interference between myself and my school administration. Sometimes even putting themselves at risk. These are the things I remember from my high school experience.

I listen to older American women who often say of their years before college “Those were the happiest years of my life.” Really? At seventeen? All their dreams came true when they were the lead in the high school musical and they dated the captain of the football team? Looking at my yearbooks this weekend, I noticed that someone wrote “Don’t worry, it has to get better than this.” Surely that friend of mine had more wisdom than the ones who said the period between the years of fourteen and eighteen are the most precious. What about the birth of your first child or your wedding day? The time when you realized that your family is remarkable; or having your own kids graduate from high school after years of struggling with dyslexia? That outshines being fifteen, having acne, and wondering if anybody will ask you to the prom.

Due to modern technology, I am able to keep up from a controlled distance with several “friends” from high school. I wouldn’t consider them friends that I have a relationship with now, but the magic of the internet means that I can look at what their careers are, pictures of their first baby, and engagements. Overall I’m glad that my dreams didn’t come true in high school. Now these friends of mine are working for insurance companies and shuffling off to law school when at seventeen, all they wanted to be was actors and make the world a better place. I’m sure in their own way they have come to the conclusion that they are doing just that. But for someone who did have a great deal of trouble in high school, I must say difficult years early on make one much more confident and excited about the dreams that are to come.