The Great Acting Blog: “The Talent For Being Happy”
Sometimes, something reminds us about the alternative paths we could have taken in our lives. A flash of resentment blinds us for a moment, because the grass is always greener. However, we regain our clarity just as quickly as we lose it.
It’s worth reminding ourselves that there is no perfect path to take, there is no perfect choice available to us. Everything is a trade-off – whenever we make a decision, we gain one thing at the expense of another, there is nothing that contains everything. Later, after we have chosen, when we endure stress and struggle, the alternatives suddenly seem to be particularly appetising because we forget that they too possess positive and negative aspects – we focus only on the negatives of what we are doing, and only on the positives of what we might have done.
There is no perfect path. Waiting for perfection means waiting forever, like the actor who can never even attempt the scene until he finds absolutely the perfect actions, the perfect emotions, until he convinces himself that he really is the character (when acting becomes a sort of neurosis) – he pussy foots around without ever actually taking the plunge. The longing for perfectionism is a barrier to action.
Woody Allen once said; “What I really like to do best is whatever I’m not doing at the moment“, a piquant statement because we all feel this way sometimes. But he also said; “the talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have“.
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