Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
How could I be 65 years old and still not know what I want to be when I grow up?
“Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.” Most people think John Lennon came up with that one, but he wasn’t the first. According to Quote Investigator, versions of this saying go back as far as the book of Proverbs.
It doesn’t really matter who said it first: it’s the idea that resonates. Wanting a different kind of life than the one you’re living causes you to miss much of your life’s joy and meaning.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told I missed my calling. There was the dance recital when I was in high school, where I somehow flung myself so high in a jump I nearly overshot my landing, and I heard the audience go “Oh! Oooh!”
As I was stuffing my red tutu into my car after the show, a woman came up to me and said something like “You were wonderful! You should be a professional dancer!” I said thank you, but what I was thinking was “yeah, right, lady – are you looking at me? I’m 17 years old and I’m fat! If I was going to be a professional dancer I would be 60 pounds thinner and taking class in New York for a year already. Who are you kidding?”
There was the time I was riding the El home when a woman recognized me from one of my improv performances. She seemed to think I was a professional actress. Yes, I studied and performed improvisation for about four years (37-33 years ago!). I made it onto a “house” team in what was then called the ImprovOlympic (now IO, because the actual Olympics noticed) and I never paid for an improv class again. But I never got paid for performing.
An old high school friend surfaced about a dozen years ago in a Facebook comment, telling me that she thought of me when she saw the film 20 Feet From Stardom. It’s about background singers, whose voices can turn a record into a hit, though they don’t often get the credit for it.
Everyone assumes that background singers are just itching to step up to be the headliner. But a successful background singer, Lisa Fischer, said, “Some people will do anything to be famous. I just wanted to sing.” (quoted in the New York Times, June 7, 2013).
When I’m asked why I didn’t pursue acting or singing professionally, I usually say, “I was overly fond of a steady paycheck and health insurance.” And while that’s true, it isn’t the truest reason. Like Lisa Fischer, I just wanted to sing–or play, as improvisors say.
I liked live performance. I liked the energy that comes back at you from the audience. I liked the sensation of being so in-the-moment that everything that happened felt utterly beyond my control, inevitable, and exactly right — so much so that it seemed like an invocation of the divine. I loved the thrill when something so painfully true that it was hilarious happened spontaneously on stage, because the players were all tuned in, not just to each other, but to what was happening through us.
But I didn’t like the competition, or the work it would have taken to land an agent or audition for a play, a TV commercial or a pilot. So, as far the show part goes, it was the performance I loved, not the business.
Yet when I stopped performing, part of me kept living as if I was just marking time until I could live some other, more creative life. I looked at my life from the outside in.
Last Sunday in church, during a wry and entertaining sermon about coping with temptation, it hit me: I have been consistently giving in to the temptation to imagine a different life than the one I have. And although I’ve found time to engage in creative expression, like singing in choirs and writing, I still walk around with this uncomfortable feeling that I should be doing more of that than whatever it is I’m doing most of the time.
After church I began to wonder, what if dutifully going to law school to ease my parent’s anxiety about how I was ever going to take care of myself (instead of scraping by in a roach-infested studio apartment taking acting classes) was what I was supposed to do?
What if helping care for my Dad through multiple strokes and his final incapacity was the phase of life intended for me? What if being there for my aging Mom when she fell and cut her head, or noticed a scrape on her leg that filled her slippers with blood and make her kitchen look like a crime scene, was exactly where I was meant to be?
What about how I’m here now for Angelic Daughter, helping her as she tiptoes into “adulting?”
What if taking care of people is my calling?
I think about that middle manager who told Lisa Fischer that 20 Feet From Stardom helped him realize that he loved his job, was proud of his company’s products, and happy with his place supporting his coworkers and his company. He realized, he said, that he was a background singer.
An improvisor’s one job is to accept the reality that other players create, support it, and build upon it. Pretty much everyone in Chicago, and everyone who has ever been through an improvisor-led team-building exercise, has learned that improvisation means saying “yes, and….” It’s all about supporting the other players.
That’s when the magic happens. That’s when you get a little taste of the divine.
Wishing you a team filled with people who say “yes, and…,” I remain,
Your looking-at-life-from-the-inside-out-now-and-learning-to-love-it,
Ridiculouswoman
We all have a calling to make this world a better place. You’ve done that. It would be nice if you were a professional singer or actress, but like Joni Mitchell sang, “Well something’s lost, but something’s gained in living every day”
Life never seems to unfold the way we want it to. However, we can be proud of what we’ve achieved in it. It can be bumpy, but sometimes those bumps bring rewards after we’ve gone over and past them. So be proud of what you’ve accomplished!