the e-dict

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, while talking to students who are part of the first generation program at school (Miramontes), I asked them what they were worried about. A hand shot up immediately.  “I am going into film and know that it will be hard and I am worried about how to define success.” Here is a kid who is the first in his family to go to college, is studying what he loves, graduating this May, then heading towards an internship at Orion in LA and he is worried about how to define success. There is something in the way he framed his concern—not will he succeed (based on some standardized rubric), but how will he define success for himself.

This sure got me thinking.

Leading Ladies didn’t make the million(s) we hoped but it played all around the world, changed lives, supported my tenure, brought humans together, and made folks laugh and cry. Success. I didn’t dance full-time with a professional company for years and years but I knew when to leave to preserve my sanity and my body. Success. Coming home from the end of a long day after still performing at 42 like a beast and not yelling at my child because I am impatient and in a self-involved swirl. Success.

word of the day: success

Most of the definitions of success wear heavy boots and sound like conquering. The word “attainment” is used over and over again in definition–with success comes the attainment of wealth, of honors, of position. The definitions and synonyms for success have very little to do with how I now frame the notion in my own heart. Success anymore feels like walking out of a room before engaging in negativity or making a meal my child likes before he is too hungry and cries all the way through it than winning a blue ribbon. And my students sure know how much I like (to joke) about a blue ribbon. The definition of success that I prefer is one that is not a cop out, but self-regulated. “the accomplishing of one’s goals.”

Some goals, some accomplishments:

Rising to see the morning before the day distorts its colors

Forgiving myself and others our pettiness when I know it’s really loneliness

Stopping at the altar of my heart long enough to hear 10 beats of its hard-working drumline in a row

Getting rejected, again, and knowing I won’t quit

Forgiving myself my self-doubt when I know it’s really exhaustion

Choosing breath over nail-biting

A quiet day in my head, one where I don’t hear the reverb of my words or the bitch-smack of my super ego

Walking into a room clean, without any of my baggage

Leaving without anyone else’s

Forgiving myself and others our neediness when I know it’s really just insecurity about not being enough

Knowing I am really, truly, trying

And being ok when all that trying doesn’t seem to do a damn thing

Getting love letters from the Universe in the form of student thank you notes,  poems slipped under my door, the perfect emojii at just the right time, a bruise that says “look at me! still dancing!,” handwritten cards from girlfriends, pruney skin from my new hot tub, and a hand, shot straight into the air, attached to a young man who has such a big dream and such a beautiful worry that reminds me how to reframe my own. success.

Love to all,

not-so-silent e