That Was Then

I sometimes exorcise my demons when I write on this little web of mine.  And that's exactly what I'm doing this time around.  I don't know if it's the time of year, or my time of life, but I'm experiencing a bit of an existential crisis.  It's nothing that's going to send me around the bend or over a cliff, but it begs my attention.  My usual New Year's life-assessment has brought up the dreams of my youth, and how none of them have been fulfilled.  Although I've been paying a great deal of attention to my material and spiritual progress for the last few years, I was saddened to realise that nothing in my life has gone the way I'd hoped and planned since I was a very young girl.  That's right - nothing.  I've been an actress and writer all my life, even when no one was watching or reading my attempts at expressing myself.  Sometimes, however, my work was acknowledged when I was in a school play, or when I received compliments or high marks for a well-written bit of wordsmithery in English class.
When I eventually understood that some people do those things all their lives, and make a living at it no less, my path suddenly became clear.  "Yes," I thought, "I'm an artist, and one day I'll be recognised and paid well for what I love to do, for what I have to do."  All at once I knew that it wasn't just far-away, untouchable, unreal people who starred in plays or movies.  I came to the realisation that I, too, could be a working artist; that I could play and write for the rest of my life, and declare myself an actor/writer on my income tax form.  After all, other people did it, why couldn't I?  So I dreamed and planned, then studied and focussed on making a career for myself.
Ah - what dreams I had.  And how naive I was.  When I think back on how I imagined myself by this time in my life - an accomplished, successful actor/writer surrounded by fellow artists who respected and admired me as I did them, I understand better than ever the meaning of "young and foolish."  But those were my dreams; they weren't real life. The real life I ended up with could easily be interpreted as failure - just a bunch of crazy, defunct plans dreamt up by a loser.  I'm not suggesting that's the way I feel about myself right now, but that insight into myself is still not an easy pill to swallow.
I have to face the facts - my life is not what I'd hoped it would be when I was a callow youth.  I'm not so self-absorbed to think I'm the only one who's realised at a certain age that they've missed the boat that's sailed off to the land of their dreams.  I just never thought that I would be one of those people  Aye me.
I suppose I could spend more time trying to figure out just exactly how and why I fell off my chosen path, but what's the point?  Although I've done plenty of self-analysis and self-flagellation over the years and come up with some reasonable explanations, it hasn't changed a thing.  I could attribute my ostensible failure to not working hard enough, bad luck, or worst of all, just plain not being good enough, which would mean I've been deluded all these years, too.  Sheesh.  But I honestly don't feel as if I've been deluded.  In the hard, competitive life of an artist in any discipline, there are lesser and greater talents, and just like any business, the arts accommodates them all to varying degrees of success, and not always according to their worth.

My idea of success has changed over the years.  When I was young and stupid I aspired to being "rich and famous."  Eventually I developed a much more realistic attitude about my non-career, and would have been happy to simply make a decent living at following my bliss - you know - pay for the necessities of life with something left over for pleasant pastimes and the future.  That didn't happen.  In order to get by I must work for pittance at a bookstore where I'm neither challenged nor impassioned, and which gets increasingly harder on these weary bones.
I hope this doesn't sound as if I'm complaining, because I don't intend that at all.  I'm simply outlining the bare facts of my current situation.  I've come to the harsh realisation that I need to change my game plan at this late juncture, and that really sucks.  I mean, how does a person just up and alter their life-long dreams and aspirations?  They've been with me for so long they're encoded in my DNA.  Since it's obvious that scheming and dreaming hasn't worked for me, I've decided to just undertake each enterprise in the game of life as it comes along - doing what has to be done from one moment to the next, and to hell with devising a new plan.  Fully engaging in the present moment will propel me into the future.  I've got to travel through life without attachment to the outcome.  Easier said than done, I know.  Once again, at this late stage, I'm playing the Fool in the hero's journey of the tarot.  That's been happening a lot to me lately.

I wrote at length about how I felt as if I were the Fool in the tarot deck while I was in Nepal this past fall.  (see Dec. 12/12 blurb)  By now my readers know how often I come upon signs and portents on my journey through life, and my time in Nepal was thick with them.  On my many perambulations up and down the roads and paths of Nepalese towns and countryside, I noticed lots of abandoned playing cards.  (To while away the hours Nepalese men like to play cards in the great outdoors.)  I usually ignored these bits of detritus, but twice I decided to heed my inner voice and picked up a single card which I spied lying face-up and directly in my path.  When I find random playing cards lying around - and it's happened numerous times over the years - I pay attention to what appears to be a message just for me.  (I'm able to interpret playing cards because of my familiarity with the tarot, which is derived from the regular players' deck.  The four suits, the number cards from aces to tens, and court cards etc. are the minor arcana - lesser secrets.  The tarot deck, however, has an extra 22 cards which comprise the major arcana, beginning with the The Fool, number 0.)  Well, wouldn't you know, on the two separate occasions the lone card I decided to look at turned out to be the Joker.  The Joker is the only card in the playing deck which has an equivalent in the major arcana of the tarot.  Maybe you've guessed where I'm going with this... The Joker corresponds to none other than The Fool in the tarot.  Weird, eh?  But it gets even weirder.  The Fool signifies beginnings of a journey, both physical and metaphysical.  The first time I found the Joker/Fool was a few days after I began my Nepalese sojourn.  The second time was just before I returned home.
Now that I've been home for a couple of months I understand the message from those cards more and more every day.  It's finally time to abandon my life-long, cherished dreams - but only as an outcome, not as a path.  I'm still following my bliss every moment of my life and with every breath I take, and whenever an opportunity presents itself, I execute my plans for a better, more fulfilling life as an artist.
The rejections haven't stopped, and that's the hardest part of all.  Sometimes my heart breaks.  At my age and with my sketchy resume that happens more frequently than not, and it won't get easier.  I know that.  I also know that clinging to a goal that hasn't manifested has caused me more pain than joy, and prevented me from engaging in the moment - from being totally present.
As an actress I know all about presence.  An actor must be completely committed to the present moment.  An actor has to listen and pay attention to what's right here and right now.  It's the most basic rule of the craft.  The same rules that apply to acting apply to life, and I've somehow never thought to transfer those skills.  Go figure.  In my non-career I've focussed more on what's  to come and what I don't have but will one day.  No wonder I am where I am.   
I shall be is I am not.   

Those profound, poetic words are quoted from the chapter on The Fool in Tarot of the Spirit by Pamela Eakins, a book I'd been seeking and ended up finding in Nepal the day after I found the first Joker card.  (Coincidence?  I think not.)  Reading those words the first time was a moment of illumination.  I shall be is I am not.  I get it, I finally do.  Living in an uncertain future has robbed me of the present.  It's always been about where I'm going and not where I am.  That's tantamount to saying that if I'm not who or what I'll be someday, then I'm no one at all. 
No more "I shall."  I am begins right now.
I began this blurb by confessing that writing is a way of exorcising my personal demons.  So now it's done - I've expressed some of my recent issues.  It's one way this writer releases them and puts them out there for all the wired world to see.  I've said my piece to find some peace.  I may or may not be heard, and I'm glad to say I honestly don't care.  I've detached myself from that particular result.  Yet the possibility that someone will hear is always there - now, and in all the here-and-nows to come .  That's good enough for me.   That's good enough for Now.
- G. P.