“When I was starting out, I used to sit down and write a couple times a week. And then, one day, I was watching these construction workers go back to work. I was watching them kind of trudgin’ down the street…It was like a revelation to me, and I realized, ‘These guys don’t want to go back to work after lunch, but they’re goin’… ’cause that’s their job!’ And I thought, ‘If they can exhibit that level of dedication for that job, I should be able to do the same.’ Just trudge your ass in!” -Jerry Seinfeld in Comedian
“Do your job.” -Bill Belichik
Sometimes you’re gonna feel like doing the thing. Sometimes you’re not.
But you will ALWAYS feel good AFTER you’ve done the thing.
Sometimes coming with the exact right verb or phrase for what you want or your actions in a scene/overall script, is difficult. Another way to tackle this is to just write down what your character dreams about. Write one or two pages in vivid detail. Dont’ edit. Don’t worry if it’s logical or if it can actually happen. Just let it flow. (There should be some excitement going on.)
When you’re done, now connect to that dream. Desperately want it. Believe that you deserve it. Expect it.
As a result of doing this work, three things will happen:
(1) You’ll remember this dream in each scene and all throughout the play.
(2) You’ll be set up for maximum conflict when your character fails to achieve it. But you’ll keep fighting for it.
(3). Because of (1) and (2), you’ll be alive in every moment and thus, riveting to watch.
“Artists can talk. Artists love interviews. Artists love talking about their songs, being asked about their melodies and lyrics and creativity.
Because artists know that as long as they keep talking they can hide within the words.
Because artists know that the music itself is fully exposing. No more hiding. The music is the thing. The centerpiece of it all.
Most artists can talk their way into their music coming off the way they want it to come off…but then what do the songs have to say about it?” -Gabe Andersen
If they awarded medals for our ability to talk about the work, we’d all win gold.
“Bad teams, they reject their roles. Good teams, accept their roles. Great teams, embrace their roles.” -JJ Redick
“There are no small parts, only small actors.” -Konstantin Stanislavski
Forget about the size or quality of the role. If you’re fortunate enough to be cast in a project, then go all out. Give it everything you got. Play the part with all your heart, mind and soul. As if your life depended on it. As if it’s the last part you’ll ever play.
“It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?
We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.
But if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a self-satisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet.” -David Brooks, The Moral Bucket List Essay in The New York Times
“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” -Joan Didion
“To tell a story is to say: this is the important story. It is to reduce the spread and simultaneity of everything to something linear, a path.
To be a moral human being is to pay, be obliged to pay, certain kinds of attention.
When we make moral judgments, we are not just saying that this is better than that. Even more fundamentally, we are saying that this is more important than that. It is to order the overwhelming spread and simultaneity of everything, at the price of ignoring or turning our backs on most of what is happening in the world.
The nature of moral judgments depends on our capacity for paying attention — a capacity that, inevitably, has its limits but whose limits can be stretched.
But perhaps the beginning of wisdom, and humility, is to acknowledge, and bow one’s head, before the thought, the devastating thought, of the simultaneity of everything, and the incapacity of our moral understanding — which is also the understanding of the novelist — to take this in.” -Susan Sontag, At The Same Time: Essays and Speeches
“I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.” -Seneca, Moral Letters
Maybe you’re feeling satisfied today because you worked hard on building your resume virtues. (Or maybe you’re frustrated because you didn’t.)
But what did you do today to build your eulogy virtues? Because those are far more important. Those are what last. And the good news is you can always work on them. (Love and simple acts of kindness are the way.)
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” -Alan Kay
“There were no textbooks, so we had to write them.” -Katherine Johnson, Mathematician and NASA scientist who played a key role in sending the first astronauts to space, on what it took to accomplish the mission
“I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.” -Cicero
Don’t like what’s going on out there?
Don’t see what you want or need or could really use?
Have a deep desire to do, to help, or to make something happen?
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” -Aristotle
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” -excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream”, speech delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
How does a dream become a reality?
First you dream it.
Next, you express it out loud. Consistently, confidently and passionately. To anyone and everyone who will listen.
Then you set out to do it. Along with the others who believe in you and your dream.
And you keep doing it, and doing it, and doing it. No matter how long the odds, no matter how dim the light, no matter how difficult the struggle.
Until it gets done.
Until the dream becomes a reality.
P.S. – Happy birthday. (The full transcript of Dr. King’s incredible speech can be read and listened to here.)
“The lack of a singular hero in the face of this disaster is not something to fret — only our desire for one is. Even though some claimed to be such heroes around the other disasters we’ve faced, I find they were more like the movies we make – they were acting a role. They were fulfilling our fantasies. We need and want something different now than individual heroes.
My fantasy is that now together we start to step out of our illusion. The truth is there will be no hero to save us.
There will only be each other. There will only ever be each other.
It is time we stop motivating everything to allow only one person to wear the cape. The heroes are the community. The community shall rise. It is by working together that things get built back better. There are no small actions. Each little improvement we make demonstrates our abilities to make a difference. When we look at all of these and take them together, we see teamwork.
Sometimes we lead. Sometimes we support. Each time and with each action, we are lending a hand. We are reaching out. We find a path and build it so others too can walk forward.” -Ted Hope
“The only solution is love and that love comes with community.” -Dorothy Day
“My grandfather was the first sage warrior I knew…Papa Ji tied his turban every day, clasped his hands behind his back, and surveyed the world through the eyes of wonder. When he listened to kirtan, sacred music, he closed his eyes and let the music resound wondrously within him; he wrote poetry in his garden…As I fell asleep each night, Papa Ji would sing the Mool Mantr, the foundational verse that opens the Guru Granth Sahib, our sacred canon of musical wisdom. It begins with the utterance “Ik Onkar,” which means Oneness, ever-unfolding. “All of Sikh wisdom flows from here,” Papa Ji would say. All of us are part of the One. Separateness is an illusion: There is no essential separateness between you and me, you and other people, you and other species, or you and the trees. You can look at anyone or anything and say: You are a part of me I do not yet know.” -Valarie Kaur, Sikh activist and author of Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory
Depending on the situation, your circumstance and your strengths…Perhaps you lead. Perhaps you follow. Perhaps you do both.
But either way, no one ever does it alone.
We do it together. With each other. For each other. Because we only have each other.
We are one.
P.S. – This inspiring news story of nonprofit groups partnering to transform a downtown LA arts hub into temporary housing for fire victims.
P.P.S. – For more of the interview with Valarie Kaur including a brief story of Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, click Here.
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