Sunday 29 July 2012

Creation/ Destruction

Thinky thoughts today about creativity and destructiveness and how they work in our world. One is so easy and the other so hard. And yet, I see people around me being creative all the time (against all odds), so why does our media only predominantly tell stories of destructiveness.
It takes a lot of energy to create something. Whether it’s a technological advancement, a new policy, a house, a piece of art, a book, or just personal self-esteem – the act of creation takes energy and effort.
It takes a single moment to destroy that something. Whether by violence, cynicism, a cruel word, a swipe of the hand, or just neglect – the act of destruction takes neither intelligence nor real work.
Human creativity takes patience, determination, courage, boldness.
Human destructiveness takes ignorance, cowardice, mean-spiritedness, weakness.
An old-growth tree can take millennia to evolve, hundreds of years to grow, an hour to cut down.
A person’s self-esteem can take a lifetime to build, years of loving care to foster, one thoughtless or mean comment to undermine.
A book can take a lifetime to gestate, years to work through, a half a day to critique.
An individual is a one-off result of millennia of human evolution and universal creative action. They take a moment to kill.
One is the easy path. It requires minimal effort. It brings immediate satisfaction. It requires no imagination: “I am rage or ennui or cynicism. Hear me tear down.”
The other is a hard path. It requires self-awareness and responsibility. Commitment and determination. A willingness to put yourself out there. A willingness to be wrong: “I am work and sweat and effort. Hear me try hard.”
So why is it that we care more about the story of the person who did the shooting, or the person who failed, or the thing that doesn’t look like we want it to? There’s something infinitely more interesting happening all around us all the time – people quietly, and not so quietly in the case of an impro jam, going about the job of creating things. Despite the fact that we know that somewhere along the line someone will come past who through anger or defensiveness or sheer boredom will want to destroy our creations – we do it anyway.
Isn’t that the news story of the century? Isn’t that the real human triumph?
Just a thought.

Thursday 26 July 2012

The power of thanks

I’ve been thinking lately about gratitude. About the difference it makes and the way it can change your life.
For two years in a row now I’ve taken part in M.A.D. Woman’s Grateful in April initiative. The initiative requires you to express gratitude for one thing every day in April and post it publically. It’s amazing how shifting your focus in this small way can bring greater happiness – not just to ourselves but to others we interact with. It’s a small but powerful expression of good.
Then a couple of weeks ago I came upon a book in the bookstore that I felt compelled to buy. It’s called ‘The Magic’. It’s by the same woman who wrote ‘The Secret’. I didn’t altogether love the way ‘The Secret’ was written or mapped out but I felt compelled by this book. Turns out it’s all about gratitude. About how expressing gratitude can change your life.
That compelled me to try something new. So every day, I express gratitude for the things I find in my path. I thank the universe for trees, for the sky, for birds, for roads, for the people I love, for my sweetheart, for my sister, for my dad and his improving health, for my mum,, for lunch boxes, for the internet, for my friends, for my impro community, for the lessons I learn and the challenges I face, for the way those challenges help me to grow, for my job, for my work colleagues, for the grass, for the ants, for my cat, for beautiful clouds, for gorgeous ocean views, for the natural world, for wildlife, for videos of cute animals, for the dolphins Chris and I saw in Queensland, for Elvis the black cockatoo… you get the picture. I can’t ever run out of things to be grateful for. There’s just too much.
It’s improved my mental health to no end and I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface of how gratitude can change your life.
That brings me to something that happened today that feels connected somehow – an expression of affirmation for the power of gratitude.
Avaaz sent me an email today. Avaaz sends me lots of emails. Some I read. Some I delete.
This one I was about to delete and would have if I hadn’t been running late to pick up my sister for work this morning. So I didn’t. I left it, thinking I would delete it later on when I got in front of the computer.
Except when I saw it sitting in my inbox I was compelled to read it. It was about an Avaaz member in England called Ria. She’s 65 and dying of terminal cancer. Her message was simple – it was a message of thanks for the peace and comfort it gave her in her condition to be part of a global community focused on changing the world for the better.
So Avaaz was inspired to thank her in return by setting up a facility that allowed the Avaaz community – including myself - to send Ria our own messages of hope and inspiration and thanks.
You can take part in this here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/ria_hope/?beXRccb&v=16620
Gratitude for gratitude. I am grateful for gratitude. That was my daily grateful just yesterday. And today it has played out, in real-time, in the most amazing way possible. Thanks to a lady dying of cancer in England.
With one email, Ria has changed the days and possibly the lives of thousands of people around the world. She’s inspired in me a hope that if there can be so many of us who share this desire for love and harmony, that the world is not so doomed after all. The world is not doomed at all.
I am grateful for gratitude. I am grateful for Ria.
The thing about gratitude is that once you start down its path, you notice how often and how unthinkingly we all moan and groan and complain about the smallest things – multiple times through the day on a daily basis. (My colleague next to me right now is complaining again about the incompetence of someone I don’t know. He does this often. Is his tendency to focus on the bad maybe part of the reason why he almost never meets anyone that is any good?)
If we switch this focus, not to ignore the things that upset us, but to focus on the things that don’t. To be consciously thankful for all the things we have that we take for granted in the world, imagine what that switch in energy and focus can do for our lives.
Could it maybe change the world?
Just a thought.

Tuesday 24 July 2012

I believe therefore I am

Recently I had an experience I call life-changing. Something that I had been desiring for a very long time finally came into my life. That in and of itself would have been enough, but for me it was extra so because some time before I had made a decision that I would stop waiting for this thing to occur. 


I would stop feeling like a ‘victim’ of circumstance. I would bring this energy into my life for myself. And more than that, that it would be better than what I could imagine. That it would exceed my expectations and surprise me in ways I hadn’t even conceived of.
This prompted me to begin a process of self-examination. I looked at every belief and assumption I held about this thing. Every paradigm and framework I had built around it. And I started dismantling them. Because my reality was based strongly on beliefs that I had never questioned, but that were at the heart of my unhappiness about this thing - I questioned even the most foundational ideas I held and began exchanging them for beliefs that felt more true and life affirming to me. Then, I started acting in accordance with these new beliefs (as if they were already true) to cement them further and start bringing in for myself the things I had been looking for. I want to repeat this because it’s the most important part of it – to bring in for myself (rather than waiting for someone else to give me) the things I had been looking for.
I ignored the pundits. I ignored the ‘rules’. I ignored the magazines. I ignored what people told me ‘was’ and ‘wasn’t’ possible. I ignored the statistics. I ignored the critics. I created my own truth. And it worked. Beyond my imagining of it.
What it made me realise is that part of the reason we communally get so many things wrong is because we have constructed our world around beliefs we’ve rarely questioned… about the nature of things, about ourselves, our identity, our place in the universe, what we have to put up with, what we can expect… and we act in accordance with that. Which of course means we create it – like a self-fulfilling prophecy. We focus almost exclusively on everything we hate and dislike. Our complaint habit is quicker than our gratitude habit.
As a society it is hard to question the underlying paradigms around which we travel. So we keep creating the same stuff – poverty, war, environmental mismanagement, culture wars - even though it makes very few people really happy.
We believe things like: “it’s just the way the world is” and “I can’t make a difference anyway” and “people are inherently selfish and greedy, so I have to look out for myself first” and “money makes the world go around” and “that’s the way the world’s always been” and “all conservatives are like this” and “all liberals are like that”.
And we act from those beliefs.
Then we pretend that some unknown third force is the one that’s doing all of this to us, causing all of this to happen, creating all the misery. We throw responsibility at anyone and everything else except ourselves.
But we’re the ones making the choices. We’re the ones taking the risks or choosing not to take the risks. We’re the ones that choose to demonstrate courage or not to demonstrate courage. We’re the ones creating this. At first I found this an unhappy and terrifying thought. Is it really all up to me? Can’t I blame anyone else? Then, when I began to embrace it, I found it an incredibly liberating thought.
Here’s a question I heard not long ago, that sums it up nicely for me. How is it possible that 7 billion people can all essentially say they want the same thing – good health, security, love, peace, enough food to eat – and be so manifestly incapable of creating it?
I think it’s the underlying beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world. If you thought differently, you’d act differently. If you acted differently, your life would be different.
For example, you enter a room of friends and acquaintances. You believe those friends and acquaintances don’t really care about you being there. As a result, you act distance and aloof. Or maybe hurt. Or maybe needy. That creates a tension between you and your friends. They react to what they sense from you. That confirms your original belief about them. And so it goes.
Alternatively, if you entered a room where you believed you were loved – where you were grateful for everyone in that room - you would act entirely differently. Your reality would be completely different. Your friendships – different.
I really think it’s that simple. But first we have to look at ourselves for the answers. Place the responsibility more largely on ourselves. Examine our feelings. Is what I’m feeling really what is happening here?
Question: How would you behave if you chose to believe differently about the thing you’re most anxious about or fear in your life right now?
What is that thing? What do you currently believe about it? What do you think that means about you? What might your deeper truth be?
Most people would call me an idealist. And yet – it is utterly practical. Bad things can and do still happen. But even in those moments we can choose how we respond to them. We can choose what we believe about them. We can choose what we believe they mean.
Belief creates Thought. Thought creates Action. Action creates our Reality. 
To change our world we need to change what we do. To change what we do we need to change how we think and feel. And to change what we think and feel we need to question our beliefs. Our most fundamental beliefs about everything. Hang them out. Examine them. Tear them down. Throw them at the wall and watch if they bounce.
Just a thought.

Paying the priceless for the worthless

A thought I had some time ago...


There are people in this world who spend their time struggling to protect what's precious. There are people in this world who spend their time trying to create something good. Then there are people in this world who have dedicated their lives to nothing more than making money. This is not bad in and of itself except when the global community is forced to sacrifice things that took millenia to evolve and can never be replaced for those things that will be useless next year. 


Paying the priceless for the worthless. 


It all comes down to what we value. So what are you valuing today? 
And is it something irreplaceable or is it something that'll be worth a buck and half in ten years? 


Just a thought.

Gender in story

I’ve been thinking lately (I do a lot of that you'll notice) about women and how we are represented in the stories of the world. All stories – but mainly television and film. 


The problem with thinking about this is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The overwhelming disparity. The stereotyping. The hyper-sexualisation. The fact that as a woman I can see a film about men and still relate to it, but many men can’t relate to a film about women. (Thus the argument that females aren’t represented because men won’t watch films about us). The fact that even when I do see a kick-arse woman on film that she is generally the exception and not the rule, surrounded on all sides by men, interacting predominantly with men doesn't help. This is despite the fact that like many women, some of the most defining and important relationships in my life have been with other women. 


So what does that tell me about what Hollywood and the media thinks about these types of relationships? This then led to other thoughts of the role our stories play in constructing our world. 


Our stories reflect and set our beliefs. Our beliefs lead us to take action. Action that creates the world. (Did you know studies have found that the more TV girl’s watch, the less options they think they have in life? One of the reasons I so loved Xena when that show was on was it was the first time I’d seen someone who kind of looked like me as the hero – she was female, she was brunette and she was Greek. Jesus. I nearly wet my pants – as a kid I had to pretend to be Luke Skywalker or Atreyu or … you get the picture. Someone with a penis. Not someone whose genitalia looked like mine. On a related note, some years ago I was working on a script based on the life of Boudicca, the Celtic Queen who almost drove the Romans out of Britain. I envisaged it as a sort of female Braveheart. When I told a VCA-grad filmmaker about this idea, the answer I got was ‘you’d need to have lots of tits and arse… the world won’t buy a female action hero’. That was ten years ago. Not sure how much has changed since then). 


It’s my firm belief that the reasons for why the world is as it is can often be traced through and reflected in our stories. To see where a society is, ask it to share its stories with you. Of course this is a simplification of sorts – stories also delve, reflect, ask questions, seek answers. But when most of our stories are about men, feature men, look at the world through men’s eyes, and represent women in very limited ways – when at all – you have an answer of sorts for what is happening in the underbelly of our world. 


That’s not to say – the world sucks and men are to blame. Not at all. It’s just to say that we are unbalanced, and the world seems out of balance. And we desperately need the voices of our mothers, sisters and daughters to be heard, seen and understood in our collective narrative if we are to tell a different type of story. Let me put it another way – when 66% of the work in the world is done by women, and half the population of the world is female, why are our stories so out-of-whack with that reality. Where are all our women? 


This thinking then led me to other thoughts about the way that stories can expand or limit our creative potential. For example, when we play genre in impro our default is often to play what we’ve seen before – characters we recognise, the templates and archetypes and yes, stereotypes, we’ve been exposed to. And because those stereotypes are constructed in ways that often diminish the stories of women, our impro can sometimes do the same. We don’t have to be sexist to fall into this trap either. I’ve fallen into it. Many times. Simply by the way we respond, our innate instinct is to replay those stories we’ve seen again and again and again. 


If we’re going to change the world for the better, we need to expand the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And if we’re going to do that, a big part of it surely is to more fully embrace half the world’s storytellers. 


So what am I doing about it... well, I hope I'm writing a story where gender is less important than character, where at least half of it is explicitly told through the eyes of the women in the world (not because they're women, but because that's what serves the story), where the females are equally as competent and capable with story wants that transcend gender, but more importantly that both boys and girls will love to read. 


Inspiring I hope the next generation of storytellers to tell better and bigger stories of who we are and who we have the potential to be. 


Just a thought.

Thinky Thoughts

I think about stuff. Occasionally I write it down. So some people told me I should start a blog. So here it is.


I won't post daily or even sometimes all that often. I tend to post when the inspiration to share a thought hits me. 
In any case, I hope - whoever you are, whatever journey has brought you here or zeitgeist you are following - that you enjoy these thoughts. That they rub against you delightfully and prompt some soul gazing. That they inspire you, or make you laugh, or prompt you to reach for the stars or just your dreams. 
That they act as wind beneath your wings.
Here is my hope that my words do that for you.