In the best of circumstances, you’re working, on something you like, and you’re well paid. In these times you walk the earth with a lighter step. Traffic snarls are merely chances to listen to more music, rain is refreshing, and the dim-witted cashier is a person worthy of compassion.

And in the worst of times, the wisdom of a three day waiting period to purchase a hand gun becomes clearer than ever.

I am no stranger to these matters, of course, much as I can elucidate a point or two about them. An assessment of my life can shift depending on the day, or the hour of the day, so that at breakfast I’m King Midas and by lunch I’m Wile E. Coyote, and all that happened in between was a phone call, or lack thereof. It’s a fragile state of affairs.

It need not be so. Caring about one’s work and livelihood is a good thing, of course, but defining ourselves by the decibel level of applause we hear is a fool’s errand.  It will never be high enough, and even Pavarotti had nights where the standing ovations must have felt tepid.

So, where do we go from here? What is the winning shot in the endless volley of good times/bad times? Can we live lives of equanimity and joy, regardless of the external circumstances?

The answer is yes. The art of it lies in defining what we can control, and what we can’t control, and making sure our energies are focused on the former. If the only joy an actor experiences comes from getting the call with the offer, it’s going to be a dark road. If instead, there is equal, or dare I say greater, excitement in, say, putting up good work in a class, then we might have something.

The formula may seem simple, but it’s effective.  It’s also very difficult to master, and no, I am no great master. But I know the road I have to travel, and that may make all the difference…

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

The year came with its share of hardships and obstacles.  The Buddha teaches us that suffering is inevitable, and damned if he wasn’t right.  But there is the inevitable, and there is the self-imposed.  We make choices.  Choices about how we live, who we spend our time with, the activities of the day.  And we have the ability to make changes.  If a person doesn’t fit our life, we can move on.  If a job doesn’t suit our ethics, we can find another.  If we can’t get through the day without pain in extremis, we can work towards our happiness.

I’m a little sad to see the year come to a close.  It was tremendous.  I learned more about life, love, and myself, than I had in the previous ten.  But it’s time to move on to the next phase, whatever that may bring.  For now, I return to this simple idea: don’t stop making massive changes.  Be mindful of others, be kind, but don’t stop making massive changes.

As Shakespeare reminds us:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Let us embrace them all…

My time in London years ago aroused my interest in street signs.  The many “Look Left/Look Right” signs saved my life on several occasions.  Perhaps the arrows around New York have a similar purpose for me now…

(Please note, these are not my photographs.  Thank you to the original photographers.  I would credit you, but I did not find your names.)

But this week I watched my once interesting role be reduced to a guy running around hallways and shouting something every now and then.  It would have been very easy to get pissed off, or sulk, or worry about how I would come off when the show airs, and these thoughts certainly passed through my head.  But over lunch, something happened.  One of the stand-ins came over and asked if he could sit with me.  Naturally, I said yes.  He was a good-natured guy, articulate and curious.

He started asking for advice.  What followed was a fairly profound conversation about taking action and the emotional roller-coaster that is an actor’s life.  And over the course of our conversation, I recognized that I had a choice to make.  My thick, addled brain woke up to the fact that this guy was looking at me like somebody he aspires to be, an idea that had been drowned in feelings of disappointment not five minutes prior.  Perspective, perspective, perspective…

The afternoon crawled on apace, and every passing hour made it clearer that still more of my role would be lost.  There was mild talk of having me come back another day to finish the work, but that was dismissed, which actually suited my schedule better anyway.

I look around the set.  I had previously worked with the 1st Ad, the sound department, the camera department and some of the PA’s.  I was dressed in a beautiful suit.  In a couple of weeks I would be paid handsomely for my time, whether it was used to its full extent or not, and I could then afford to pursue my career on my terms.  The show itself would come and go like a winter’s breeze and nothing more.  What to focus on suddenly seemed so simple.  Feelings of letdown disappeared.  If anything, they were replaced by a certain glee that every overtime hour spent wondering if we were going to shoot my scenes was, in fact, contributing to my “new laptop” fund.

Eventually they sent me home with a handshake and a mild apology.  It wasn’t necessary.  They had given me so much.

Yet another Mineralava Musing…

I barely looked up, thinking it was another of so many “shriekers,” those women so eager for attention that they feel incumbent to pierce the eardrums of all within a two block radius.  But my eye did catch a blur of a man racing for the door, and two others in pursuit.  In a flash, a tangle of bodies came to a crash at the doors.  Coffee went flying everywhere, and what had happened was now plain to see.  The first man had snatched a woman’s purse, and two good citizens went after him.

They wrestled the would-be thief to the ground as a security team came over.  Eventually the police even showed up, en masse, as they are wont to do.  I wasn’t able to see the rest of this show as I had by now made my way upstairs to be tortured by avant-garde drivel, but I kept thinking about the incident in the lobby.  (Anything to distract from what was happening on stage…)

One moment in particular jumped out at me.  A man to my left had turned to his friend, after the robber had been subdued, and said, “I saw it happening, but I thought, ‘I’m not touching that.’”

I hadn’t “touched it” either.  I was blocked by a glass partition which would have required me to leap over, action-hero style, and pray for a soft landing, and as the whole thing unfolded in seconds, there was no time to go around.  But I wondered if I would have “touched it” had there been an opportunity.

I’d like to think the answer is yes, but I can’t say for certain.  The two men who tackled the robber had long before made their decision about what they would do.  They had decided that even as unhappiness creeps into the happiest of places, they would fight to preserve the sanctuary.  I’ll never know what I would have done, but I’d like to think I can at least take something from the lesson.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

At any rate, earlier in the day I’d been reading Aristotle, my favorite philosopher king, so I thought I’d apply that wise man’s logistical approach to my dilemma, and I went through a series of queries to see how I’d gone from A to B.  So…

Could I have been visited by phantasms?  Possibly, though I’ve never understood exactly what a phantasm is, so this was crossed off the list, as was any attempt at understanding Aristotle when he begins talking about phantasms.  But seriously, folks…  All right, then.  Start externally with what we know to be true.  Had any physical circumstances changed between points A & B?  Not really.  It was quieter, maybe, but the room and my body were identical.  I was perhaps digesting food, but this does not produce anxiety by itself.  And what of circumstantial changes with direct effect?  Had I received any information between A & B?  Again, no.  Everything I knew at 4am I knew at 10pm.  And what of outside nautral forces unseen?  Was the brain moving through a cycle of thoughts that inevitably includes the good, the bad and the ugly and I happened to awaken during the bad and the ugly?  Unlikely.  The mind is not a merry-go-round with a schedule to keep.  There is no discernible pattern to the mental horses coming around.

I went on in this manner for a few minutes, adding a few more questions, breaking the inquiry out further and further, and always finding a simple way to negate their premises.  I eventually concluded that the one thing that had changed was, simply enough, a random shift in what I had decided to think about.  The only change had occurred in my mind, by my mind, of my mind, but it was, somewhere, somehow, mine to keep.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter.  If the mind is capable of stepping left and right in midnight two-steps, does it have to be on auto-pilot, or can we put some black and white foot marks down on the floor and dance to our own number?  Thinking seems to be both an arbitrary and elective process.  I can concentrate on something when I want to, or I can be swept away in thought.  One is not more true than the other.  I can feel fine at 10pm and lousy at 4am, despite nothing being different.

I’m given to the idea that we can exert much more control than we do, that you, me, Tom, Dick and Harry can all choose to feel a certain way, can decide to think about things, and can wake up at 4am and tell ourselves to go back to sleep just like snapping our fingers.  If you disagree, that’s fine.  But I’m going to start with the idea that it can be done and see where it takes me.  After all, nobody landed on the moon by writing “This will never happen” on the motivational whiteboard.  And I hear the moon is lovely this time of year.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

I’ve said before that I believe in choice of focus.  And I do.  It’s not always easy, but we can decide what to think about, how to feel about it, and who to be.  Uncontrolled thoughts will arise, of course, this is perfectly natural, but what we do with them is largely an exercise in free will.  And like any other skill in life, it requires a learning curve, practice, failure and more practice.  But we must never lose sight of the fact – yes, fact – that the possibility for change exists.

I told a friend that I’m getting better at my focus, laying my success rate at “9 out of 10 times” for making the positive choice.  I went further and said that I’d like to get that up to “99 out of 100″ and then “999 out of 1,000.”  Since that seemed pretty darn good, I left it there.  But I took some delight that my instinct was to leave room for the one bad choice, or failure, or letdown, or whatever we want to call it.  For without the one, the 9, 99 and 999 don’t exist.  Without the one, there is nothing to learn from.  Without the one, we have no touchstone.  In a word, without the suffering, we have no shot at happiness.  Does this mean that those who suffer will be happy?  Not necessarily.  There’s the small matter of mindfulness in between, that is, the recognition of having the choice.  Eureka!  Awareness is all!  I must share this revelation with everybody!

(Pause.)

There’s a particular satisfaction in arriving at the same conclusions much wiser people came to 2,500 years ago.  You feel at once enlightened – “Hey, I got there, too!” – and a bit of a lovable dunce.

Emphasis on the lovable.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

Wow.

These are just a few examples.  Click for larger views.