The Vs. Studio Blog

“To love is to will the good of the other, as other.” -Saint Thomas Aquinas

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Matthew 22: 37-39

“If you want to know what love looks like, Rabbi Jesus is saying, here it is: Love crosses borders and boundaries; it makes new cultural rules; it cares for the stranger. Love turns strangers into friends.” -Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis

And so the first question that the priest asked — the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

That’s the question before you tonight. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question.

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you. -excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop Speech” (1968)

God is love.

That is a true and powerful statement and says everything.

But you know what else?

The reverse of that statement is also true and powerful and says everything.

Love Is God.

“He has the most who is most content with the least…It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” -Diogenes

Speaking of wisdom and wishes…

The Greek and Roman historian Plutarch tells a famous story about Alexander the Great visiting the impoverished Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. Diogenes was resting and soaking up the sun in the public marketplace of Corinth. Alexander, who long admired Diogenes, offers to grant him any wish he wants. To which Diogenes replied: “Yes. Could you get out of my light.” (Or another translation: “Stand a little out of my sun.”)

Instead of being angry, Alexander was amazed by the man’s bold attitude and total lack of fear. As he walked away, Alexander reportedly told his men, “If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes.”

When you’re grounded. When you’re doing what you want and living the life you want. When you’ve learned the secret of enough…Nothing and no one, no matter what they offer, can ever take that away from you. You’re free from needing. And that is everything.

P.S. – Hat tip to my friend Alex (aka “Admin Alex”) for telling me another terrific Alexander the Great story. This one, from 322 BC, was reported by Josephus Flavius and is also enshrined in the Babylonian Talmud…Alexander asks Shimon Hatzadik – the High Priest from the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem, “Who is wealthy?” To which the priest answers: “One who is satisfied with his lot”.

There’s an adage in basketball that says the team that usually wins the last two minutes of every quarter or half, wins the game.

Apply that to your life.

No matter how bad today went–whether in or outside your control–stop whatever negative habit you’re continuing to do. And right now, before you go to sleep, do one productive thing, one right thing, one thing that you know you should do. Even if it’s just for a few minutes.

You’ll be amazed how good that will make you feel. Almost like you won the day. Which will put you in such great shape to win tomorrow.

The LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at night.
God said, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.”
Solomon answered:
“O LORD, my God, you have made me, your servant, king
to succeed my father David;
but I am a mere youth, not knowing at all how to act.
I serve you in the midst of the people whom you have chosen,
a people so vast that it cannot be numbered or counted.
Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart
to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong.
For who is able to govern this vast people of yours?”

The LORD was pleased that Solomon made this request.
So God said to him:
“Because you have asked for this—
not for a long life for yourself,
nor for riches,
nor for the life of your enemies,
but for understanding so that you may know what is right—
I do as you requested.
I give you a heart so wise and understanding
that there has never been anyone like you up to now,
and after you there will come no one to equal you.” -1 Kings 3:5, 7-12

“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.” -Proverbs 4:7

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” –Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

“If you wish to be wise, love wisdom; to love wisdom is to love what is true and to act accordingly.” -Seneca

“There is no freedom without wisdom, there is no wisdom without freedom.” -Ryan Holiday, book Wisdom Takes Work

If you’re ever lucky enough to find a magic lamp and a genie pops out and says he will grant you three wishes, tell the genie that you only need one.

Grant me wisdom to make good choices.

If you have this wisdom, everything else will take care of itself.

(Without it, you don’t stand a chance.)

“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.”