New York is perfect in the fall. Perfect. Posh peeps back from the beach, flirty skirts framed by boots replacing sandals. Back to school kids bestowing a youthful energy, and the next season of art, culture, restaurant openings, rousting for their return, while citywide everyone transitions barista orders from iced to regular.
Last week, I walked down University taking a right toward West 11th Street; arguably one of the most gorgeous blocks in Manhattan. Lined with brownstones, shadowed with (for New York) a forest of trees, a fleecy 70-degree breeze grazing my legs, this September afternoon, I had it all.
From our Flatiron loft rehearsal space, my route home was passing though the quintessential downtown Union Square greenmarket and then through the arch at Washington Square Park. I had just left my first rehearsal, the first read through of an A.R. Gurney play that was to have its New York premiere off-Broadway next month. With me as a lead. The other actors were phenomenal. Our artistic team, expert. A real play. The playwright was involved. My director, wicked smart, visionary with classics.
This was a moment I dreamed of as a little girl who didn’t get chosen as Dorothy for her 8th grade production of Wizard of Oz. The girl who, when everyone else was going to Cancun for sunburned spring break Pina Coladas and random hook-ups, came to New York to soak in eight plays a week and feed off Kushner, McNally, Ibsen, Mamet, Finn, all the while sneaking parties in Edison Hotel suites with Upper West Side private school kids, who at 15, seemed infinitely more sophisticated than anyone she had ever encountered her my life.
Then, I wanted a part of this New York. And here I was. Walking through the West Village, home, in gratitude. Here I was.
A little while ago, I posted a blog where I made the near-impossible decision to turn down this play because it conflicted with the wedding of some of the dearest people in my life. So how was it, on this perfect September day I was walking home in such gratitude for something I had let go of?
What’s the difference between manifesting and striving?
How do we feel the call of the soul versus the pull of the ego?
What is ambition and what is epic flow?
I am expert at letting go… I have learned well that holding onto anything keeps me small. When something, someone, exits my life and I find myself wanting to clutch, I go to my tools, mourn/bless/release as quickly as possible, knowing that longing and regret only bind me to some smaller version of myself for which I no longer have any need.
This can take minutes or it can take weeks—each process varies in span… (Whole foods is out of yerba mate yesterday? = 3 seconds. Douche-baggy guy I stupidly fell for a year ago? = 3 weeks…) but that’s the general gist.
And this isn’t only for negative things; we need to release the positive just as quickly. We don’t want to hold onto anything, because holding on clogs us. (Pride + gratitude walking home from first day of rehearsal? = immediate release. Amazing guy who I never get to see? = ongoing letting go.)
When we do this, it provides others and new experiences the freedom to come as they are, without our expectations of what something should look like. When we do this, we release into the flow of life.
How high we are in consciousness is categorized by how rapidly we have the ability to let things go. My teachers would frame it as: how quickly do we pass through our suffering?
So I mourned/blessed/released this play big time. I couldn’t remember the last time I had to make a choice over which I was so conflicted, so I knew I needed to bring in the big guns and fast…
I did my work, yet as the days crept by, I realized something…
It had started to live in me. The character, the play. Whether you are an artist or just an artistic aspect to yourself, you know what I mean. That spark of creation that appears—that inspiration, the hot flash firefly of excitement you want to grab hold of and shove down onto the page, the screen, the kiss, the board meeting. That thing that turns you on, that lights you up.
I kept having this with this play. Well after I let it go. This woman, this character was showing up in my life—I could see her world; she was starting to form clearly, without my prompting, in my heart and mind. She was taking me over.
This wasn’t about hope or longing or even regret. It had started a growth, a creative process of its own volition and I thought:
Why is this here if I’m not supposed to be doing this? What is this?
When you have truly, fully, released something and it continues to show up, it is supposed to be there. The old adage: “if you love something let it go…” Is why it’s an old adage. It’s stuck around because it’s Truth.
When it is supposed to be there, this leads you to inspired action. Inspired action is entirely different than ambition or striving. Inspired action can be busy, efficient, fast, challenging, but it is also, it is ALWAYS, easy.
When it would not go away, I was in the shower and gifted a scheme to make the show happen for me. I got on the email horn to my artistic directors, floated ideas by creative maverick friends over blessings and beers, and every response I got was: yes, yes, yes, intriguing, yes. There was work, there was negotiation, there was a touch of elaborate prosaic begging, it took a couple of days, and then the company got back to me.
“Ok. Yes, let’s do it. We want you.”
It was, by anyone’s estimation, a theatre miracle.
I was impassioned. I was lit up. I threw my heart into it because I knew it was what my heart wanted and I also knew that if it came back the other way, if the “no” rather than the “yes” came around the bend, then I had done everything I could possibly do. I had given my full heart, gladly, willingly, with great humility and vulnerability, in saying: I want this. I know I want this. Not, I need this. Instead: this is living in me. It’s mine.
I have a framed fortune cookie fortune from years ago on my desk:
“There is no fear for the one whose thought is not confused.”
If it’s yours, you know it. We always know it. If it lives inside us, it is supposed to be there.
Always let it go. Always.
Then see if it comes back.
If it’s supposed to, it will find you.
*************************************************************
If you are in New York this fall, I would be delighted to see you at the play.
click here for tickets 🙂
