Transcendence: A Sermon

Recent unexpected deaths have me thinking of mortality, and it occurs to me that all faiths, all the world’s religions, as well as atheists—anyone, in fact, who considers their own demise—face a question I almost never hear asked: After I die, what do I do?

Well, I won’t do anything, is one assumption. As a Catholic, I was taught that I would no longer be burdened with a free will, that my time would be spent in rapturous joy praising God, wanting nothing else, needing nothing else, an utter transcendence of everything I’ve experienced in life. My limited understanding of other religious traditions is that what comes after death is some similar experience: What you “do” after death, however glorious, is not something you choose.

For those who don’t accept this scenario, death is most likely a transition into nothingness.

But this means that, for all of us, what we do after death is as absurd a question to ask as it appears to be, that either there is nothing that can be done, or what can be done is utterly irrelevant to our former experience of living in a universe of choices, experiencing personal growth.

So what struck me as unexpected deaths occurred this week is that in our religious belief or non-belief we have arguably very similar expectations of what happens when we die. What follows is an unending period of stasis. That, however blessed, there is a quality of nothingness in what we should expect of an after-life, just as there is a quality of transcendence in believing death utterly ends our existence, simply because we’ve left life behind for all eternity.

Regardless, what we leave behind when we die rests in the living hearts of those who were touched by us in life, as well as anything we’ve left behind that represents us. It seems to me that all persons regardless of their beliefs have this in common.

I find strength in this, that regardless what we believe, death unites us as an overarching, shared passage. And in that passage we transcend all things we know.

If I’m wrong about any of this, the unanswered and largely unaddressed question necessarily remains: After I die, what do I do?

How to live forever and change the world

Here's inspiration from a young man who once portrayed my character's son in an indie film....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHNALcttrQo

Community Blvd

Wouldn't it be lovely to live where the streets had names like Paradise and Faith?  You could say, "I'll meet you at the corner of Hope and Peace."  Of course, we'd have to put up with things like, "Last night, shots were fired near the intersection of Chapel and Trinity, killing three.  The victims remain unidentified."

What Storytellers Do

The following I adapted from a speech by Tom Hanks' character in the film Saving Mr. Banks:

Forgiveness is what we learn from art, from books, from plays.  The author forgives himself.  Because life is a harsh sentence to impose on one’s self, and authors redeem themselves through writing.

The author must trust himself, must not disappoint himself.  Where there is blindness, the author gives sight, reveals truth.

The author’s characters, especially the main character, are precious to him.  If he trusts himself, he won’t be disappointed.  And every time anyone reads his words, they will witness characters revealed, understood, saved, honored.  They will love these characters with the guileless trust of children.  They will weep for their cares, they will wring their hands when they lose, and in the story’s final moments, they will rejoice in the humanity of these characters, they will sing.  For generations to come, the author’s characters will be honored, and they, as well as the author, as well as his audience, will be redeemed.  All these characters stand for will be saved—along with the author and his audience—not in life perhaps, but certainly in imagination. 

This is what we storytellers do.  We restore order with imagination.  We instill hope, again and again and again. 

Artists, authors, playwrights, all, trust yourselves.  Prove it to yourselves, and you will prove it for everyone for all time.  Your work is the meaning of your life, the fulfillment of your promise to the universe.

Common-Sense Terminology to Describe Units of Work

A primary purpose of language is to enable us to name things with reasonable terms we can all agree on that make sense.

Units of time, for example, are:  supereoneon, eon, era, period, epoch, and age.  And from there more granularly, I believe we would agree on millennium, century, decade, year, month, day, hour, minute, second, etc.

So what’s useful terminology to express discreet units of work effort?  The terms and the order I propose are:  Project, component, module, process, method, task, step, and detail.  I believe this is a clear, consistent, and common-sense way to conceptually modularize and express the elements of work.*

So I have a project, and I have to consider the components of my project, which is made up of modules, modules which are in their turn made up of processes.  Each process has methods, each method has associated tasks, each task has steps, and each step has details.

I'm not promoting an idiosyncratic grammar merely to appear clever.  My intention is to suggest a habit of easily using one appropriate term or another relative to the work at hand.  Is the work to which I’m referring at the project level, or does it deal with the details of a step?  Am I dealing with the methods of a process, or the tasks associated with those methods?  I’d like to be able to be able to use consistent terminology to characterize work and be immediately understood simply because there’s a general consensus that a task, for example, is more than a step but less than a method. 

Just seems to me that in English we’ve done a better, more precise job providing generally agreed-upon terms for units of time, for example, than for units of work.

*Note:  There are a variety of components in a project, including material.  Materials are, I suggest, part and piece, that is, pieces which make up parts.  There must be other components as well, but in this post I focus on the work effort itself, what must be done.

The Theatre of Facilitation

I am a software trainer by profession—what I refer to as my “day career.”  It’s my business, my S-Corp, my area of expertise and interest.  Software training works for me in part because it has a business model which is familiar to me:

• I  contact, or am contacted by, one of my agents.  A deal is made for a multi-week presentation.  (I review upcoming auditions.)
• I interview with my potential client (audition for the director), which usually consists of a live or taped example of my performance style.
• If selected for the role, I am sent contracts and other materials, invariably including a script, which I prepare for a train-the-trainer (T-3) boot camp (the rehearsal period).
• During the T3, in addition to the technical material, I am given lots of other useful information regarding dress code (costume), corporate culture (character development), and other role-specific information (director’s notes).
• Invariably I have resources to fall back on, subject matter experts (SMEs) who know more than I about the matters at hand.  (No theatrical parallel here—except that it means I’m not really the expert, I’m only a facilitator, much as an actor is not really the role, not really the person, but is portraying a person, backstory, theme, etc.)  It’s more important that I excel in my role as a facilitator (actor) than it is that I am an SME (the real-life person my character represents).
• During the training itself, there’s clearly a beginning (opening scene), a middle time (the dramatic arc), and an end (climax).
• So many practical elements must be addressed, the size of the audience (house), the mood and the abilities of the students (patrons) as good listeners.  Are they with you, are they learning—and hopefully enjoying themselves?
• At any time necessity may require changes to the script with limited or virtually no prior warning.  
• Anything can and will happen during training (the run of the show), depending on the audience, technical matters, and the instructor (actor) mood and competency in the moment.  The trainer (actor) has to improvise.
• There’s an abruptness to the end of training.  Relationships among trainers and their students, which may have been intense, usually promptly dissipate (when the show’s over, it’s over).  Everyone goes his or her separate ways, though as professionals it’s likely their paths will cross again (they may be cast together in another show).
• Even if the same training course is repeated, the audience is different and the trainer (actor) must respond accordingly.  And different contracts (plays) of course may be wildly different from each other, a universe unto themselves.

There’s some evidence that the software training model is changing, simply because so much self-directed learning is becoming available, and the idea of a person actually training a group of others, even virtually, present only remotely over the internet, is somehow passé, very 20^th century.

Regardless, I enjoy software training in part because it’s the closest thing to live theater I’ve found in the business world.

A Successful Player

My window of time during which I might have become a commercial success as a working actor has closed. This is not a statement of fact, I’m stating what’s highly probable. The work, the fame and money, go to talent who have the credits. I've been a working actor all my life, but few if any of my credits are commercially substantial.

What works for me is a deep understanding of the choices I made when I was younger, why I made them, and what I wanted my career on stage to mean.

I am a man. In life, I inhabit many roles. My resume reads like an encyclopedia. I've played more roles than most men. I've lived to fullest extent possible, tried to. It was the right way, the honest way, for me to live. I lived in as many ways as I could, tempered only by my understanding of what was life-affirming. In biblical terms, I did not worship false gods.

I've always believed that civilization is marvelous but rather beside the point. Put another way, I wanted to observe and understand everything as best I could without prejudice, admitting my predispositions as I knew them. Understanding was my purpose in life. I might have taken more risks, but was never idle. I was busy gaining insight.

On my own terms, I’m a success. I have been the man I planned to be. My window remains wide open. The fresh air keeps me alive, the possibilities remain endless—at least until I end, perhaps even beyond if my legacy has any value.

I encourage my actor contemporaries to celebrate choices made, because they were made honestly. 

And those of you who are young? If you make the right choices, you may achieve commercial success. I know what I wanted, what drove me.

What do you want?

Time to Insight

I can’t regret what I did for computing, because computing has always helped me to think more clearly and live more openly.

A recent Microsoft marketing video reinforces, in a wonderfully abstract yet technical way, how state-of-the art data processing principles accelerate “time to insight”—what a lovely turn of phrase!

We could all improve our performance intervals from ignorance to insight, in relationships, in our art, in our work.  The best uses of computing power enrich our lives by increasing our awareness.

Keeping Up with Oneself

I am naturally inclined to having a “big picture” mentality—witness this blog.  I seem to have countless projects running in my head, countless more untethered ideas, vignettes of possibilities that bubble up in my awareness which I often scramble to write down before they pop into extinction, leaving a filmy trace of their promise.

Over time I have come to feel like I am not simply pursuing my dreams, but am racing breathlessly after them as they recede.  I’ve accomplished much, but so much more I only imagine I complete.

I had a friend when I was in my twenties who wanted to be an artist, a sculptor.  He spent some of his artistic energy collecting barrels of objects he imagined he’d one day make into works of art.  The rest of his time he spent planning, specifically drafting plans, like an architect designing structures.  These two efforts left virtually no time for building things, and when he’d occasionally attempt to do so he was at once dissatisfied with the result and taken aback by the amount of time making things actually required.  He decided, quite courageously I felt at the time, to stop attempting to make art.  He got rid of his barrels of stuff and just drew his plans for all the pieces he’d never complete, arguably never begin.

Our society emphasizes results and winning competitions, over process and thought.  We need things done, of course, but we need to improve how we do them and, more importantly, more fully consider what we’re doing in the first place and at milestones along the way.  A good software developer knows that time spent in analysis reduces time spent in coding and testing.  But we’re pushed to meet deadlines and have become inured to continually returning to the drawing board to come up with the next best thing, to produce new versions of everything from the latest couture to the latest weaponry.

But I digress, as I so often do when related ideas burst in my brain.  My point, my original point, was not to lament how our society stresses us to achieve, but to consider my friend the (former?) artist and his solution to his dilemma, and how I find myself barely able to keep up with my own plans, especially those plans which I have not yet given up on completing.

So, considering my own dilemma, here are a few thoughts for now:

I am losing the race to finish the things I’ve started.  I am old enough to have physical file folders the contents of which are yellow with age, and which I examine as if they were gathered, written, composed by some ancestor of mine, not myself. 

Instead of a “bucket list”—I have that in spades—I have a list of projects I know I will never complete.  In the manner of my friend, I’m calling them done before they’re even fully developed.  I have made peace with myself that I can’t do everything I propose to do.

I am considering exit strategies, ways to respect my ideas, my accomplishments, my failures, my best intentions, so that the chaos of my attempts at living well has more form to it—a theme, perhaps.  Some of my impulse here is leaving a legacy, I’m sure.  But more immediately, I need a better coping mechanism than chasing after illusions.  I need to more realistically manage my expectations, and this means continuing to improve on how I get things done, when I can expect to complete projects, and whether I want to follow some paths at all or not.

Maybe in simply writing this I’ve solved my dilemma, solving it by identifying it as a meta-project, a project of projects, and admitting to myself that catching up with myself is a task I’ll never complete.

The Meta of Everything Is Experience

Those who sell products know that they must understand how the experience of a product affects potential customers, how that product not only satisfies some need the customer perceives, but also an experience the customer craves.

At the risk of expanding the scope of sales in a crass society which already seems to commercialize everything, I encourage you to consider how creating and appreciating experience is a prominent feature of all areas of our lives.

You want those you love to love you.  But no one can fully appreciate you, another person can only love the experience of you.  In fact, you only love the experience of others, not them, not fully.

You would still do anything for love, for those you love.  The fact that you are limited by your perception of others, limited to merely experiencing others, may seem a semantic distinction.  But it suggests things true and important: 

• We often don’t appreciate how we affect our experiences of each other, nor for that matter, our experience of places and things around us.

• Things which distract us from experience, or censor experience, things which impair our experience—drugs, alcohol, rage, sorrow—strike at the heart of living.

• Things which improve our experiences, and the experiences of those around us may improve life, or may give us false assurances until the nature of others and of things assert themselves and temper our experience:  The stock market rise was a fluke, the warm feelings we had were fueled by false advertising, or a lover’s lies.

Experience is all we have, in the end.  Understanding our shared as well as our unique experiences is the key to understanding each other, and the universe itself.  

Experience is our reality check, as well as how we are misled.  Thus paradox resides in the foundation of human experience, which accounts for religious faith and nihilism, sarcasm and good humor, hope and despair.

Make your experiences count.

Silence is Golden

When there are no words, the silence speaks volumes.  Though silence is maddeningly taciturn....

Responsible Art

There's currently an allegation of racism in an upcoming staging of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.  I’ve not investigated the matter sufficiently to form an opinion one way or another.  

But I have an opinion about Kipling’s original collection of stories.   When I was a teenager, The Jungle Book was alternately inspiring and comforting to me.  I didn’t care who or what Kipling was.

I've always believed that art should stand on its own merits.  Politics—or political correctness—or how a writer’s life may inform his or her art, only interfere with one’s appreciation of it.  And to analyze works from a different era through the prism of today is a distraction. 

To the extent socially responsible writers self-consciously avoid offending people, they offend their muses.  Responsible art is responsible only to art.  Art has no cause but the honest expression of itself.

A priest once told me he needed an operation, and confided to me that his surgeon could be an atheist for all he’d know or care.  He just wanted the best surgeon available.  That’s how I feel about art.  I want it to be the best available, not the most high-minded. 

Question Authority

We rarely consider the ways we lend authority to others, don’t always perceive we do.  

Certainly there are authorities, governments, churches, team leaders, chairpersons, parents, who command authority.  All derive it ultimately from the consent and acquiescence of the governed.  This is inherently neither good nor bad, but we should consider any authority’s validity.   

Often we grant authority without realizing we are, obey perceived requirements which are no more than someone else’s agenda, authorized only by our submission to it.

When we hesitate to do things on account of what others think, question their authority to prevent us.

“Creative Specialist”: An Oxymoron

Specialist credentials are acquired by repeated masterful performance in a specific area.  Specialists are by nature focused, driven, single-minded.

Creative persons are by nature distracted, craving the next novel experience.  They are by nature generalists, facilitators, able to make connections.  They may have specialized skills, but they’re always looking for new things to do, and however skilled they may be, they invariably aren’t more experienced in a given area than someone who’s devoted their career to that particular specialization.
Creatives thrive in the nether-world of crossover skills.

Typical job posting qualifications call for specialists.  The text of these qualifications will state that they want creative people, willing to turn on a dime with changing circumstances, who are not satisfied with routine assignments.

We live in an era of specialization.  Human Resource departments don't recognize crossover skills.  Regardless what they proclaim, they neither want nor believe they need creative types.

Aging Is Just All Right

"Do you know why women look away when you pass them on the street?"

"Why?"

"Because they're dazzled.  Why wouldn't they fall for you?  Don't you know how extraordinary you are?  Look at yourself, there's so much to see.  The older we get, the more precious we are.  That's what you've missed, you haven't understood that."

"Hadn't thought of it like that, no."

"Think of it that way.  It's the right way, the only way."

─An older man talking to a much older man, from the film, Man on the Train.

One Question

There are many answers.  Some insist there’s just one, for example:  Jesus Christ is the answer.

There are countless questions, but I long ago decided there’s just one:  Why?

An Insight into Inaction

Beginnings

Today is a new beginning.  

Our yesterdays were new beginnings.  Tomorrow, another.  And each day after, new beginnings all.  In a minute, too, another new beginning.  

Each past moment, those old new beginnings?  Gone.  And each future moment is a matter for speculation only.    At this time, this new beginning—this "now"—is all we have.  

So many second chances, piling on, one after one another.  We lose them all, utterly, failing time and again.  I mean we fail, because we can't possibly succeed in any one moment.  Unless we're dodging a bullet... and how often do we walk away unscathed when we dodge bullets?

It's up to each of us to consider this moment as our best chance, to make the most of it, in spite of the odds.

Identity

In 2009, author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) recorded a TED talk on nurturing creativity. It amounts to a surprising piece of practical advice for my fellow artists. Unlike her, I doubt there’s much of me outside of myself, but like her, I feel an elemental force within me, almost a separate entity.

My “genius”looks like Alec Guiness. When I was a boy, his name was Gopy (pronounced “Go pee”—which suggests his moniker’s etymology) , which became more formally “Alpha” when I became an adult. Alpha resides somewhere deep behind my eyes. Unlike Ms. Gilbert, I feel quite whole and self-contained, just not entirely of one mind.

Rich and Poor

Capitalism or Socialism? Set aside politics and trust science to make the case for economic equality:

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2011-10-25&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email