Saturday, November 22, 2008

All the World's a Stage


Alas poor Yorick , I knew him”….William Shakespeare

Hamlet said, gazing into the skull of his dead friend, so depressed from all his loss and troubles. If someone had told Hamlet, forgive, move on, be creative with your loss, and go talk to a medium to clean up your dead relatives issue, there might not be a play.

There are some things we must put to rest. Things become tired, worn out, the tenure is up, the expiration date is over,it's time to retire, and close the play.
What makes it so hard to give things up?

I recently had a client, whose father left after he was born and whose mother never gave him enough; emotionally or figuratively. At 50, he has a job he was successful in, but no longer is happy with, belongings he has no need for, ways of being in the world that no longer work for him, eating habits that are compromising his life, and when I asked him why he still hangs on, he said, “they are my security blanket, they are things that make me feel safe or remind me of my illustrious past”. The stage set for another act.
If we want to grow, move ahead, and be more of who were are called to be, we need to let the blanket go.

So I must walk my talk.

For me, acting, was a creative way to survive my young adult hood, exciting, fun, difficult, and permission to be someone other than me. Now like a worn out blanket it no longer serves me. If your heart is not there, neither will your spirit be. Strange, to have kept holding a space for something to come, when in fact, that space kept me from embracing the things that were right in front of me. The 30 year run of my professional acting life has closed.

Now, if I am on stage, it will be helping Hamlet, Harold or Hanna talk to the ghosts of their relatives, clearing up those difficult familial issues. And if I hold in my hand or talk to a skull, it will be in the field of homicide assisting detectives in their investigations, or with Max my crystal friend.

Here choose I. Joy be the consequence….William Shakespeare