The Vs. Studio Blog

“Serve Who Shows Up.

No matter the size of a group, I show up and give them my best. I’ll bring the same energy and heart to a room full of five people that I will to a room of 500. And I’d suggest you do the same.

Truth be told, you’ll never know how full or how empty the rooms will be for the things you create, but every single person who shows up makes an investment of their time to see you. It can sometimes get discouraging when things aren’t as busy as we would like or when we don’t see the crowd out in the audience we were expecting. But if there are people out there, even a few, that’s an accomplishment and for us a responsibility.

Serve who shows up, and I promise you’ll make a big impression, even if the audience is small.” -Michael Roderick

There’s an old adage in the theater: you don’t perform if there are fewer people in the audience than in the cast.

I don’t know that anyone follows this and it certainly contrasts with another adage: the show must go on…But one of the greatest shows I’ve ever done was the day after our opening of a play called Waste of Shame. The play was written and directed by my good friend and uber-talented artist, Ron Klier. (At the old Elephant Lab space, now the Broadwater Plunge bar.) Opening night was great. Sold out house, tons of energy, and great audience feedback. Everything you hope for in an opening, especially a World Premiere.

The next day?…There were two people in the audience. (Well technically three, if you count Ron.). And those two people were comps.

Our cast size?…Three.

Backstage, we debated what to do. Should we perform or just tell the two people the show was cancelled and offer to have them come another night? We didn’t want it to be a weird experience for them.

After deliberating, we decided to do the show anyway. No pressure. Have fun. But we made a pact to give those two people the best show of their lives. We felt enormous gratitude that they were there.

The show was incredible. Way better than opening. All three of us felt so connected and alive in the play. We could feel that the two people were with us in every moment. That gave us confidence to keep trusting. To keep playing free and loose and live in the world of the play.

When the show ended, the two people gave us a standing ovation. They were super enthusiastic. And on the way out, they told Marcy, our box office manager, that it was one of the best pieces of theater they’d ever seen.

Oh, and they insisted on paying full price for the tickets too.

If a country is governed wisely,
its inhabitants will be content.
They enjoy the labor of their hands
and don’t waste time inventing
labor-saving machines.
Since they dearly love their homes,
they aren’t interested in travel.
There may be a few wagons and boats,
but these don’t go anywhere.
There may be an arsenal of weapons,
but nobody ever uses them.
People enjoy their food,
take pleasure in being with their families,
spend weekends working in their gardens,
delight in the doings of the neighborhood.
And even though the next country is so close
that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs barking,
they are content to die of old age
without ever having gone to see it. -“Tao Te Ching” Verse 80 by Lao Tzu (Stephen Mitchell adaptation)

The question to ask yourself and relentlessly keep striving for:

How can I build a life that I don’t ever need to take a vacation from?

Not that vacations are bad. They’re awesome.

But they’re so much more awesome when they come from “wanting to do” instead of “needing to do.”

“Whether you have ten years left or a hundred years left, your life is an incredibly brief moment. We know for sure you won’t be here in a century.

But today? Today you are in the Great Game. And this moment you have right now might as well be the most important moment in the universe. Your time is thin. Go out and live fully now.” -James Clear

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” -Marcus Aurelius

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” -Seneca

No one knows how much time you’ll have left.

But for right now, you made it. You’re here. Alive. On this earth.

You’re in the great game.

Go play it with all your heart.

Carpe Diem my friend.

P.S. – This extraordinary scene.

“Why is improvement hard? Part of the issue is everyone wants to improve, but nobody wants to destroy. Change often requires destruction. Or, at least, unlearning. Let’s call it gentle elimination. You may have to leave little habits, update current beliefs, eliminate comfortable patterns. When you want better outcomes, your daily norms may need to change. The process of improvement is not just about adding things you like. Sometimes habits and patterns belong to who you were, not who you are trying to be. If you’d like something better, then a routine you are comfortable with may have to die.” -James Clear

“The way we feel about ourselves depends on our relative positioning more so than our absolute performance. Our scoreboard is relative, not absolute. This is why growth feels like destruction. Why getting better feels like getting worse. Why building up feels like tearing down. Because growth forces a change in environment. You can’t reach your true potential in the tiny pond where you started. You have to leave the safety of what you know to explore what you can become. At some point, you outgrow the places, people, mindsets, behaviors, and beliefs that once felt like home. That provided comfort. Stability. Grounding. In those moments, you have a choice: You can stay. Embrace the comfort and safety of your small pond. Or, you can leave. Push into new frontiers. Enter a bigger pond.
But if you choose to leave, if you choose the path of growth, do so knowing that it’s going to hurt….You asked for the growth, so pay the cost of entry with pride.” -Sahil Bloom

“We are not very good at realizing that there is a secret way to God… We have to strip ourselves of our false selves, not in order to have nothing, but in order to be real….For me, to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I truly am and of discovering my true self.” -Thomas Merton

“When you are able to move beyond your false self—at the right time and in the right way—it will feel precisely as if we have lost nothing. In fact, it will feel like freedom and liberation…Your True Self is who you objectively are from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God, ‘the face you had before you were born,’ as the Zen masters say. It is your substantial self, your absolute identify, which can never be gained nor lost by any technique, group affiliation, morality, or formula whatsoever. The surrendering of our false self, which we have usually taken for our absolute identity, yet is merely a relative identity, is the necessary suffering needed to find “the pearl of great price” that is always hidden inside this lovely but passing shell.” -Richard Rohr

“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.” -C.S. Lewis

To change your self, you have to destroy your self.

That’s the only way the new can fully take over the old.

Are you willing to self destruct?

“The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived.” -Leo Rosten

“The world will offer you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” -Pope Benedict XVI

“Everything about a person should be beautiful—her face and clothes, but also her soul and her thoughts. Your stepmother is good-looking, I won’t argue with that…But all she does is eat, sleep, take walks, and enchant people with her beauty. Her life has no purpose. She has no responsibilities, other people do the work for her…that’s how it is, right? And I think a life of leisure is a life wasted.” -Astrov to Sonya in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (Annie Baker adaptation)

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” -George Bernard Shaw

It’s paradoxical but true: the more you seek, ease, pleasure and comfort, the more stress you end up having. Especially when life doesn’t cooperate and all you’re doing is reacting to events and circumstances.

Instead, strive to live purposefully, intentionally, meaningfully. Be thoroughly used up.

When you feel you did your absolute best and gave it everything you could (whether that’s the end of a day or the end of a project), that’s when you’ll feel the most relaxed and comfortable.

“All art is quite useless.” -Oscar Wilde

The point of making art is to make art.

Art For Art’s Sake. That is the best kind, the only kind.

For more inspiration, read Billy Oppenheimer’s “The Point.”

How many times have you heard someone say
If I had his money I’d do things my way
Hmm, but little they know
Hmm, it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind

Hmm, once I was wading in fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed of to get a start in life’s game
But suddenly it happened
Hmm, I lost every dime
But I’m richer by far with a satisfied mind

Hmm, when my life is over and my time has run out
My friends and my love ones
I’ll leave there’s no doubt
But one thing for certain
When it comes my time
I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind -song “A Satisfied Mind”, originally written by Joe “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes

“When we upgrade something in our lives, the thing we used to be satisfied with is no longer satisfying. That’s the nature of an upgrade. After a certain point, the only thing we’re buying is the way the upgrade makes us feel in the moment, not our satisfaction going forward. At some point, the best upgrade is the realization that we have enough.”

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” -Epictetus

All the money, fame, success, pleasure and power in the world doesn’t hold a candle to having a satisfied mind.

Kurt Vonnegut knew the secret when he talked to F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was…

…knowing that he had enough.

P.S. – The song “A Satisfied Mind” is one of the most covered songs in music history, but the Jeff Buckley version is my all-time favorite. It is truly sublime. Click Here to listen.

“What is the ONE thing you could do right now such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” -Gary Keller

Gary Keller’s advice above is great, but don’t let it paralyze you from starting.

Just pick a task, any task, and go COMPLETE it.

Do this again and again. Day in and day out.

Eventually you fill figure out the exact, right, one thing. But not before you complete a whole bunch of other things.

“There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality. We think that there is something hiding reality and that this must be destroyed before reality is gained. How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts. That which will be the day you laugh is also here and now.” -Ramana Maharshi

The reality is…you are reality. Here and now.

You’d be wise to remember this at all times.

“Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” -Joyce Meyer

“Let’s go.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We’re waiting for Godot.” -Samuel Beckett

“Day after day, as we wait for the things we desire, we become different people. In the act of waiting, we become who we are. Waiting points to our desires and hopes for the future; and while that future may never arrive and our hopes may never be fulfilled, the act of reflecting on waiting teaches us about ourselves. The meaning of life isn’t deferred until that thing we hope for arrives; instead, in the moment of waiting, meaning is located in our ability to recognize the ways that such hopes define us.” -Jason Farman, Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” -Blaise Pascal

“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?” -Lao Tzu

According to MIT Professor Richard Larson, sometimes called “Dr. Queue“, Americans spend roughly 37 billion hours each year waiting in line. That works out to about two to three years of the average person’s lifetime. That’s a whole heckuva lot of time, and behooves us to learn to wait well. So how to do it?

Resist the urge to fill up every moment with some sort of productive time or dopamine rush. Put the phone down.

Instead, allow your mind to just notice and appreciate your surroundings. Be still. It’s not only okay to be bored, it’s actually really beneficial for you.

It might not feel like it in the moment, but the better you can wait, the better you will feel and be. And more often than not, the creative breakthrough you seek lies at the end other end of your stillness.

P.S. – This excellent Marginalian post.