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Saw a performance tonight, Mark Rylance in a play called Jerusalem, here in New York. This man's commitment to the moment, to the material, was unquestionable. (Spoiler alert: I'm now going to describe the end of the play.) At the end of the play, he calls upon the old gods to curse those who are coming for him. He beats upon a drum, intoning the names of his ancestors and the ancient names of spirits and dark forces of nature to come to him, and the light around him turns the green of the forest and a mighty shadow, as of a giant, passes over him. They have come. Stunning work, powerful words beautifully directed, beautifully staged, beautifully acted. How many of us can bring ourselves this fully to our work? How many of us do?
I spent the afternoon with an old friend, taking pictures in Central Park, talking about acting, life, happiness, commitment. She asked me if I thought that, after a certain age, we really could make money, take care of ourselves, be successful. Absolutely, I said. How?
There are two requirements: first is that we do what makes us happy. We follow charm. We stop talking ourselves into doing what is not right for us, what doesn't feel right for us, by convincing ourselves we need to do this because at a certain point it will pay off. At a certain point we will enjoy it. Because this is the way life works. This is not the way life works. We are not meant to suffer and spend ourselves cheaply in order to be rewarded at some unspecified future time. Rewarded for what? For being able to take pain? For being willing to push aside our heart's desire? For agreeing to toe some line painted by someone else who maybe was never happy themselves? This is false charm. Run from it.
We follow charm. The subtle tug of nature telling us where we belong, where we are meant to be in order to be of maximum service. Perhaps it's not meant always to be fun, per se. But it is meant to be enjoyable. It is meant to be satisfying. It is meant to feed us at the deepest level of our being.
And what's the second thing? We work on a daily basis to clear away the garbage that obscures our experience of the movement of the laws of nature that are flowing in and through and around us at every moment. We meditate to release the stresses and then we study, on a daily basis, whatever we are drawn to, spiritually, in order that we steadily correct the intellect toward being able more and more to accept joy in our life. And if we really need help in this regard, we become teachers of meditation, and we make commitments, like the commitment to write about this process each day, so that always we are reminding ourselves that life is the order of the day, joy is the demand that life makes of us and despair something to be left behind.
Today I will remind myself to follow joy, wherever it may lead.
Woman in Red Dress at Theatre, in front of Music Box Theatre, 45th St.
All material copyright Jeff Kober
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