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

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.

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.

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.

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.

An Insight into Inaction