The only tyrant I accept in the world is the still small voice within me"---
Mahatma Gandhi
I went out with a friend this week that has a son attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles. She was telling me about an experience her son had with one of his teachers.
This teacher is different. She's had a tough road, but has found her niche in teaching and she did an exercise with her students' that was impressionable. For 15 minutes, she had them running at increasing speeds around the auditorium. She didn't tell them the purpose of this exercise. After they were good and tired, she had them return to their seats. She turned out the lights, and had them close their eyes. She said "take in these words" and she began, very loudly, almost yelling, letting these words penetrate:
YOU ARE UNSTOPPABLE.
NOTHING CAN GET IN YOUR WAY.
YOU ARE WORTHY.
YOU CAN DO IT.
DO NOT EVER GIVE UP.
And on and on.
By the end of the exercise, her son told his mom there wasn't a dry eye in the room. Everyone was moved in their own way.
Why would these words move anyone to tears? Why, when someone believes in us or tells us that we can do it, are we so affected?
Is it because we don't believe it ourselves?
Or is it that there is something in us that know this is true, but stopped believing it. And hearing the words resonate like a familiar voice calling us home?
Could it be that there is something within us that knows we are powerful but is just afraid of finding out?
But what are we so afraid of?
We are afraid because to risk being magnificent is to also risk being vulnerable.
We don't want to risk looking smart if we can also risk looking stupid. We don't want to risk loving if we must also risk rejection. We don't want to risk being seen if it means being misunderstood.
And so what happens?
We end up doing nothing at all. We don't build the website. We don't ask the person out. We don't submit the manuscript. We don't give up academia to pursue our passion as an artist. We don't take a month off to go back packing through Italy. And even though we have something really important to say, we don't risk public speaking to the unknown response of the audience.
Instead, we take the safe road, we move in packs of accepted norms, we stick to the status quo.
We stay put.
The problem with this is that it is not who we are. Our natural tendency is to want to express ourselves, to want to expand.
When we follow the road already paved for us, when it isn't ours to follow, we don't ever know who we could be, who we would be, who we might become if we risked expressing ourselves in our individuality.
We never know the thrill of our own genius.
This is what I believe the students were moved by. Someone in the room told them who they already were. Not who they would become someday.
But who they were, now.
At the core of who we are there is brilliance and glory and genius.
Yet at the same time, there is imperfection. There is uncertainty. There is risk.
So are we willing to risk vulnerability in exchange for feeling alive? Are we willing to chart our own course, even if it means taking a road less traveled? Are we willing to make our own rules even if we don't know if we will succeed?
Because what if it's not about success or failure, but how much we really lived?
What if the true measuring stick is how much we really gave expression to the person we are?
How would we fare?
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