Playing Emotion

For all the political flap jaw we've had in the past 5 1/2 years about freedom I am surprised to fall upon a preponderance of evidence that mankind is not hardwired to seek freedom. Nor is man hardwired to seek peace, whether it be personal or international. I know this only because I have witnessed scores of people, both in the public sphere and in my private life, consistently choose the opposite.

I would have to include myself in that grouping as I have noticed that I tend to make choices that will lead me down the path of maximum inner trumoil. Others, I've witnessed, make choices that will manifest conflict outside themselves. Both tendancies serve the same purpose- they allow us to avoid taking immediate and decisive action that may bring us fulfillment in some area of our lives. We often make plenty of excuses and justifications for why we are not where we think we ought to be in life when, in reality, if we have decided upon a moral/ethical code and remain consistent life should be pretty darn simple. Not easy, just simple. And yet...

After mulling this over with several friends and colleagues I was surprised to hear a the same basic idea echoed back to me from people who are vastly different from one another in their approaches to life. The idea was this: conflict creates strong emotional responses and if we are not aware of our feelings we do not feel alive. There are many of us who fear numbness over pain and crave feeling above all else.

In acting it is absolutely, painfully dull to watch an actor "play the emotion" or "play the quality" instead of the action indicated in the play. For example, if we watch an actor playing our favorite, evil, hunchback, Richard III, concentrate only on the quality of "being evil" his portrayal will be hollow and showy at best. We would not be able to peek through the language and see a man so wounded and angry that he would destroy anyone and everyone in his need to compensate and dominate. We would just see an actor mustering all the "evil" conventions and cliches available to him and we would, most likely, fall asleep before the winter of our discontent could be made glorious summer by this sun of York. But if we could see an actor stay on track and actually pursue an objective and letting the emotions come without trying to manipulate them we would be in for a treat. We might even learn something about ourselves by watching. As an actor, this is one of the first things that I have learned and have struggled to realize in my work. However, as a human I tend to wallow in the feeling- to play the feeling, if you will- rather than do what my training demands that I do. My habit is to play the emotion and not to pursue my objective. That is why I often find myself feeling stagnant and stuck in life. Bad habits do die hard.

Playing the emotion is self-indulgent in an actor. It is no less so in an everyday human being. This, I believe, is at the heart of why we tend to choose conflict and voluntary bondage over peace and personal freedom. We're addicted to the emotion and we do not trust that the emotion will be there for us if we concetrate on our objective(s). We hang on to feeling as if it were life itself. It is not. Letting go often provides the richest emotional life available, but it requires faith and self confidence. After all, anxiety is nothing but the inherent belief that if something went wrong we would not know how to handle it. Focusing on emotion as a result instead of a by-product of life can stop us from achieving our goals. It can stop us from living our lives to the fullest. Emotion can be so addictive that we can spend lifetimes seeking vague concepts like "Happiness" and "Security" over concrete goals like a savings account or a career in our chosen field.

States of being are unattainable because being is ever changing. Chasing a state of mind is like trying to catch smoke and this frustration can cause us much distress and chip away at our self esteem. As I see it, in life as in acting it is the action that matters. Everything else will fall into place once the action is clearly defined. Then you will be unstoppable.