The Vs. Studio Blog

“As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; 
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells 
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s 
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; 
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:” -Gerard Manley Hopkins, poem As Kingfishers Catch Fire

If you try to help a caterpillar break out of its chrysalis too soon, if you don’t let it struggle on its own, it never becomes this…

Don’t run from the struggle. Embrace and be grateful for it. It’s everything.

P.S. – Watch this amazing video of butterfly scales forming inside a chrysalis. You will believe in magic.

What exactly do you want? What are you chasing and why? And if you got everything you wanted, what would your day-to-day then look like? Would it change any, if it all, from what you’re doing now?

Consider this parable…

One summer, many years ago, a banker was vacationing in a small village on the coast. He saw a fisherman in a small boat by the pier with a handful of fish that he had just caught. The businessman asked him how long it took him to catch the fish, and the man said he was out on the water for only a couple of hours.

“So why didn’t you stay out there longer to catch more fish?” asked the businessman.

The fisherman said he catches just enough to feed his family every day, and then comes back.

“But it’s only 2 p.m.!” said the banker, “What do you do with the rest of your time?”

The fisherman smiled and said, “Well, I sleep late every day, then fish a little, go home, play with my children, take a nap in the afternoon, then stroll into the village each evening with my wife, relax, play the guitar with our friends, laugh and sing late into the night. I have a full and wonderful life.”

The banker scoffed at the young man, “Well, I’m a businessman from New York! Let me tell you what you should do instead of wasting your life like this! You should catch more fish to sell to others, and then buy a bigger boat with the money you make so you can catch even more fish!”

“And then what?” asked the fisherman.

The banker’s eyes got all big as he enthusiastically explained, “You can then buy a whole fleet of fishing boats, run a business, and make a ton of money!”

“And then what?” asked the fisherman again, and the banker threw his hands in the air and said, “You’d be worth a million! You can then leave this small town, move to the city, and manage your enterprise from there!”

“How long would all this take?” asked the fisherman. “Fifteen to twenty years!” replied the banker.

“And then what?”

The banker laughed and said, “That’s the best part. You can then sell your business, move to a small village, sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take naps in the afternoon, go for an evening stroll with your wife after dinner, relax, sing, and play the guitar with your friends. You would have a full and wonderful life!”

The fisherman smiled at the banker, quietly gathered his catch, and walked away.

“When you go through life with preferences but don’t let your happiness depend on any one of them, then you’re awake. You’re moving toward wakefulness. Wakefulness, happiness—call it what you wish—is the state of non-delusion, where you see things not as you are but as they are, insofar as this is possible for a human being.” -Anthony DeMello, Awareness

“I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” -Ecclesiastes 2: 10-11

The thing you think you want.

Is it a desire or a preference?

Preferences are light and malleable. You can have many of them and it won’t destroy you if your preference doesn’t happen. You go with the flow.

Desires are heavy and rigid. It’s okay to have them (a burning desire is necessary to make great art), but have as few as possible. For as the Buddha said, “desire is suffering.” You will suffer greatly for your desire until you attain it. And even then?….

“I’m your density. I mean, your destiny.” -George McFly, Back To The Future

It’s no accident that this script and this role came to you at this exact time.

Embrace the mystery.

It’s your cosmic destiny calling.

“The Master doesn’t talk, he acts. When his work is done, the people say, ‘Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves.” –Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

The best directors, the best leaders, they don’t care about getting credit.

In fact, they’d prefer you felt you came up with the idea or answer. All by yourself.

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Pain + Reflection = Progress.” -Ray Dalio

“The trick, researchers say, is realizing that a prerequisite to motivation is believing we have authority over our actions and surroundings. To motivate ourselves, we must feel like we are in control.” – Charles Duhigg, Smarter, Faster Better

Struggling? Find the thing or project that gives you E.P.O.

E = Enthusiasm

P = Progress

O = Ownership

What can you be highly enthusiastic about? Something that gets you out of bed in the morning and fired up. Because we and the rest of the world need your enthusiasm. Badly.

What’s something that you can track your progress? Remember change isn’t linear. There will be many bumps on the road. But over a long enough period of time, you can definitely measure your progress. To paraphrase Peter Drucker, “if you can measure it, you can manage it.”

What’s something that you have ownership of? Meaning you have control over whether it gets done and the way it gets done. Hopefully with excellence and generosity.

If you have E.P.O., then you’re home free.

“What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure? Whether you go up the ladder or down it, your position is shaky. When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance.” –Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

We all want to have arrived. We all want to just get there.

Awareness comes from realizing there is no “there, there.”

There is only process.

Your journey is round, not straight. Just like the shape of a compass.

“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.” -Pink Floyd, “Another Brick In The Wall”

“The secret of happiness is not to do what you like to do, but to learn to like what you have to do.” -King George V

Let’s face it, even if you’re living the dream, doing the exact job you love, there are tons of un-fun things you still have to do. Necessary things in order to do what you love. (I don’t know a single actor who loves learning lines, for example.) That’s where discipline, having a big vision and knowing your why kick in. Along with having a great attitude (“I get to do this Vs. “I have to do this.”)

Producing, an often thankless job, comes to mind. There are a lot of details, a lot of tasks and a lot of moving parts you’d rather not engage in.

But if you lean into these tasks, carry them out to the absolute best of your ability, your reward will be great.

Which is, you get to make the art you love and create a great experience for your fellow artists and the audience.

What’s better than that?

“No, the jungle wasn’t evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares. It occurred to Mellas that he could create the possibility of good or evil through caring. He could nullify the indifferent world. But in so doing he opened himself up to the pain of watching it get blown away.” -Karl Malantes, Matterhorn

Karl Malantes was a senior at Yale and awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Instead of going to Oxford–which the military would allow–he enlisted in active military duty and went to Vietnam. In the phenomenal Ken Burns doc, “The Vietnam War,” he talks about his decision. While personally against the war, Malantes felt an overriding calling to help other soldiers through his service.

He survived and years later he set out to write a novel chronicling his experience.

It took him thirty years.

The result…“Matterhorn”, one of the greatest war novels ever written. I urge you to read it. You’ll forever be altered.

Freedom isn’t free. And regardless of your feelings on war, our soldiers are heroes and we can’t say thank you enough.

Matterhorn will remind you why it’s important to do so. Not just today. But every day.

Thank you Karl Malantes.

Thank you Dad.

Thank you to all the other heroes out there.

I often end these blog posts with the sentence, “Go make your art.”

And while many readers of this blog are other artists, the sentence applies to anyone.

Recall our definition of art: “doing something that might not work in service of others.”

Whatever industry you’re in, whatever you’re trying to do, whatever change you’re trying to make, you’re taking a risk. A leap of faith. You have no idea if it will work out, but you’re going forward anyway. Because you care enough to try.

Thank you for your courage and your attempt at excellence and generosity. We are all the beneficiaries.

Now…

Go make your art.