Can you do anything to prepare for the moment when everything changes?
My favorite part of being an actor was spending hours perfecting a complex movement. The mind and body was engaged, practicing in slow motion its mechanics so that my body would learn consciously every necessary step. A cue from the outside would initiate the movement and then an internal firing of neurons and muscle contractions would carry out it execution. Practice begins sloppy and general. Practice ends crisp and specific. There was a triangular marriage between the emotional, mental and the physical. You did not know which would come first. Are you aware of feeling and then moving or of moving and then feeling? When the mind and body act simultaneously, there is a deep impression on whole body memory. Once this re-wiring or conditioning takes place, the movement becomes second nature and can be perceived as instinctual. You feel like you are moved rather than doing the moving. When movement is learned at this level, then it becomes effortless and spontaneous.
So much preparation is necessary to create an effortless moment. This process of preparation applies to artists as well as scientist. A writer spends their life reading, experiencing, contemplating and experimenting before they are ready to effortlessly write. A scientist spends their life reading, experiencing, contemplating and experimenting before they are ready to prove a hypothesis. The process is the same. We are preparing for the moment all the time. The stuff of our life is our preparation. As Ram Dass likes to say when quoting Gandhi: “Our life is our message”.
I have spent my life reading books on personal transformation, experiencing the subtleties of energy flow, contemplating the stars and universal thoughts, and experimenting with roles, masks, and keys to unlock doors of happiness, wondering is there something more. Nothing is in vain. All has been a preparation for the free flowing nature of the moment.
I have also spent most of my life believing that I am on the wrong track, not doing what I “should” be doing. I now realize that every moment I have lived was a preparation for this moment. None of it was a mistake. The moments of complete boredom, fury, depression, and disappointments all initiated internal processes that have brought me to my current state of balance and flow not possible without the experience of past discomfort.
I just got back from a professional networking event at a Sushi restaurant where 300+ Hispanics mingled and schmoozed to sushi and drinks. I was in my element, effortlessly working the room and charming the attendees into getting information about going back to school for an MBA. Eight years at the university doing what I do, day in and day out made the night effortless. I did not have to construct a plan on how to network. Life was my training manual. Eight years ago my networking skills were sloppy and general, now they are crisp and specific. I am finding that I can move from a place of least effort regardless of whether I work at the university or write. That’s a huge shift.
So if you ever find yourself asking “what can I do that is unique and special?” Just look at the stuff of your everyday life. You have already done all the preparation to live out this moment. There is nothing else you need to do.
“This above all, to your own self be true”- William Shakespeare
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