Dream the (Im)Possible

      They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway.  After watching Smash and seeing the difficult and somewhat fictionalized life of getting a show onto Broadway, I've often wondered if that star-struck Disneyana feeling remains once a show makes it "there."  Apparently so since nearly 12 years later, the heavy-hitting producers of Smash such as Stephen Spielberg and Robert Greenblatt (former head of NBC) are doing just that and bringing the show to Broadway (although early reports says that it "will depart liberally from the series")...wait, what??  The Broadway version will have the same producers, the same song writers, and perhaps even a few of the same cast members (but that is looking doubtful although the original cast reunion sold out in 15 minutes when they did a fundraiser in 2020).  But never mind all that because what stuck with me about that original series were the dancers, those "extras" that line the back of such shows and concerts and who often give their all and knowing that they're performing to highlight "the star."  This is evident with such performers as Beyoncé (who has each of her dancers go through an audition every year) and Celine Dion (who is now suffering from a muscle stiffening disorder that will likely impact her vocal cords).  Dion's 2008 world tour (at a whopping 3+ hours long) showed many of these back elements, from the choreographer making last minute adjustments to both Dion and the dancers, to the organizing of the massive amount of people and equipment that has to assembled, checked, then taken down and loaded onto chartered planes for the next country's performance (as in Australia and Indonesia and eventually back to the U.S.).  Imagine if just one piece of that equipment malfunctions, or if a key dancer hurts an ankle, or if the star loses her voice, all of which happened during Dion's tour.  So who would want to get involved in that??  Maybe a young lady about to turn 40?

      In her book My What If Year, author Alisha Fernandez Miranda admits that while not yet 40, she pretty much had it all: being a mom, a CEO, and a success financially.  She wrote: Over and over, I heard the same tiny question in my head: Is this it?  It wasn't that I didn't have enough or even that I didn't have everything I wanted.  The problem was that I did have everything I wanted -- or that I thought I wanted, that I had worked toward so arduously and for so long.  Everything that everyone I respected in my life --especially my parents and grandparents before me-- had hoped I would have.  But what if this was all I was ever going to achieve?  Was I finished trying new things, having new experiences, getting those butterflies in my tummy when I was nervous about pushing my own boundaries?  I worried that I had made all the big decisions I was going to make, took the big risks, and that everything was going to be the same from here on out.  As soon as I allowed myself to spiral down that rabbit hole of misery, I immediately felt painfully and viscerally guilty.  Poor, privileged, spoiled brat, miserable because she got what she wanted and now she wants more.  How dare I?  After everything that had been sacrificed for me to get where I was, I deigned to want something different?  I felt awful, and then felt awful for feeling awful.

Your Life's Path in 2024??

     Or jump over to Kathleen Flinn, somewhat newly married at the time who began her book, The Sharper Your Knives, the Less You Cry, this way: Most teenagers don't ask for a sauté pan for Christmas...Despite that, I came to an important conclusion.  I wanted to be a chef.  Or a ballerina.  I couldn't decide.  My mother, by then a college graduate herself, nixed both ideas.  She insisted that I get a "real degree."  I didn't know where to do that, either.  I threw a dart at a map on my wall, and it ended up on Gary, Indiana.  Since no one would willingly move to Gary, I packed up my car and headed to Chicago, with vague plans for law school.  If you're wondering where that indecisiveness led her, besides becoming a mid-level manager at Microsoft (and also nearing 40), she decided to enroll in a cooking course at Le Cordon Bleu, which required moving to Paris (what??).  As she told the publisher: Who thinks their life is inspirational when they’re living it?  I was finished with school, back in the United States and writing every day in a windowless cubicle.  I’d been writing for two months when I realized that by starting chapter one with the first day of school,  I’d begun the story in the wrong place. So, in one day, I wrote the first chapter, “Life is not a dress rehearsal.”  Without that chapter, the story lacked the context of the short obituary, my father’s death, or my sister’s longing to attend the Sorbonne.  It was not part of the original plan for the book, and once I wrote that, I realized that the book was not about cooking school, but about identity.  Her story is one full of surprises (including how the now-famous cooking school began as a promotion for selling a magazine in 1895) and as she watches the chef meticulously prepare a mirepoix (a base used for flavoring other dishes), chopping vegetables with the precision of a machine, she tastes the finished product and finds it...bland: Huh.  It's remarkably bland.  Not unpleasant, but disappointing after all the work.  One student takes a sip and throws it out.

     Life can be like that.  Our grand visions of all that we expected and anticipated --whether food or a job or even a marriage-- can turn out to be more of an illusion than a fulfilling dream come true.  Not always of course, but sometimes.  This became evident in the best-selling book long ago by Sharon Butala, who gave up her professorial urban life and moved to the bitterly cold-winter cattle ranch of her new husband (we're talking middle of Canada cold).  And with no experience raising cattle, she now had lots of free time to do those things she always wanted to do...except, she found that what she thought she always wanted to do was just a nebulous piece of fiction, a grass-is-greener sort of thing she created to escape her city life.  For her, now came the hard part of trying to figure herself out.  As she told 19 Questions: At the very beginning, a lot of my writing practice was focused on learning craft.  One of the big issues that I think most people who didn’t start when they were four finally reach is that moment when you try to figure out what the interaction is between craft and ideas – which comes first, so on and so forth – and I finally figured out that I could not express my ideas,  I couldn’t even pinpoint them, until I had developed a certain level of craft.  As years passed, and I got better and better at the craft, it became much easier for me to actually take a great leap into better ideas.  I didn’t have to fight for the words so much.

     But figuring out what you really want and who you really are can happen at any age, or for some may never happen.  For Shawn D. Williams, that piece of the puzzle came when he was 18 and living with his parents.  What if he built a big bean bag chair, as in big...but not have it be a bean bag?  He went down to their basement, cut up everything he could find that was soft (camping mattresses, foam bedding, and more) and emerged with his first product, taking it everywhere he could...in his van, to concerts, to friends' homes.  His LoveSac was 8 feet in diameter and it seemed that everyone who saw it now wanted one.  His book, Let Me Save You 25 Years, tells of his idea becoming so popular that in 2004 he was offered a chance to appear on Richard Branson's television search for the next new product.  He ended up competing against Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx who would go on to create a billion dollar company...she came in second.  Shawn won the competition and a check for $1 million (his company is also now a billion dollar company).  In the beginning, he wrote, he couldn't find enough scrap foam to fill his chairs until one foam company offered him a deal: sweep up our factory floors each night and you can have all those leftover pieces.  So a bit of his advice on following your dream?: Never lose your willingness to sweep floors, and you will become a uniquely effective leader known for your integrity.

     Such stories are both everywhere and nowhere because not everyone has the means to drop everything and start anew.  This could mean having the financial resources, or the emotional resources, or the support you need, even if that support is coming from just inside of yourself.  Take the experience of author Miranda who added that her inner voice kept nagging at her and asking her how hard could it be to just go ahead and follow "that calling," especially since she would be willing to intern at such places for free?  Free!  As she wrote:  Eventually, I silenced the voice inside of me, screaming "YES!  OKAY!  I'LL DO IT!  JUST PLEASE LIKE ME!" for long enough to create a relatively clear calendar in front of me, for the first time in a long time.  Now all I had to do was find an internship to fill it with.  The hard part was over, and the offers started pouring in.  Just kidding.  Actually, nothing happened.  Most of my emails weren't even acknowledged, and those who did respond rejected my offer outright.  Life, as with dreaming, is so unpredictable...

     When author/chef Flinn was asked to address a class of newer graduates at Le Cordon Bleu, she wrote in another book: Consider for a moment what success looks like when passion enters the equation.  Is it money?  Is it fame?  Or is it having the strength to follow that passion?  To have the will to go down a path you never thought you'd venture?  No matter what, remember that life is short, shorter than you think.  It can be gone just like that.  You think you'll figure it out someday, only to find that someday never comes.  One thing that I hope you'll do is try not to focus on what other people expect from you.  At one point in my life I was so concerned about the next rung on the corporate ladder, and only later realized I missed the entire point of the climb.  Find something you believe in.  Then, just do it.  That's what matters.

     Gee, it all sounds so wonderful and so easy but the reality is that it's a matter of balance, a balance in your life which you may or may not discover, and one which may come at any age.  When my wife suggested that I should go and check with a physical therapist for my torn anterior tibialis, that tendon that allows you to lift your toes up off the ground and one which I somehow snapped over a year ago, I questioned what a PT could offer since I was experiencing no problems and had already been to both my doc and a foot surgeon, both of whom had told me "good to go."  But you're older, my wife said, and maybe a PT could give you a few preventative exercises to help prevent further injury (and this particular PT did do wonders for my wife when she had a hip replacement).  So off I went, which is when the balance thing emerged.  Hmm, he said, as he glanced over my MRI scan from a year ago, you've got a few more tears to your other tendons (what??), including the Achilles (double what?? -- neither of the other docs said anything to me other than telling me that some tendons looked a bit "frayed").  So we want to do some strengthening exercises so that those don't tear further, he told me, adding, or then you will need surgery.  Gulp.  So the balance thing.  I had to stand somewhat yoga-like on one leg, arms down at my side and head straight up: first one leg up, then switch and do it with the other leg (it was to show the weakness in my snapped tendon leg); then I had to walk to him heel-to-toe, the length of a short path (think drunk driving test), arms at my side and looking straight ahead.  So let's stop there because some of you will do these exercises and pass with flying colors, while others may be as wobbly as I was (after that "walk the line" test, I would have been given a Breathalyzer, even being stone cold sober).  According to several studies, the average time for standing on one leg is 30 seconds (22 seconds if you're over 60), and walking heel-to-toe should be pretty straight forward, even if you cheat and peek down at your feet or find your arms automatically flaying out so you don't fall.  Now, he told me, do each of those exercises with your eyes closed...stand on one leg, then the other, then walk heel-to-toe.  Yikes (don't try these unless you're being supervised or near a wall or something soft such as a bed or a couch).  The good news?  There are exercises to help you improve your balance such as these suggestions from the Mayo Clinic, although a physical therapist might guide you along a more individualized path (he also told me that I have the onset of Morton's neuroma*...good grief, what else?).

     Just as with me discovering that my balance was diminishing (and it was indeed a surprise since I walk the dog 2 miles daily, still swim regularly including jumping out of the pool vs. using the ladder, and continue to catch myself if I trip), I would never have found any of that out until I went in and got tested.  What else could be disappearing --or appearing-- in my life, or in your life.  Often we find things unexpectedly, but often we find them only after being tested or challenged.  That voice in your head that says "you're good but you're not that good" may prove humbling in that you may not be the next superstar or uber-athlete, but it should also be coupled with that other voice that tells you "you'll never know until you try."  

    So one last one: Caroline Gleich.  Here in my conservative state of Utah, she's running for the U.S. Senate and should she win, she would be paired with our other Senator, a far-right conservative who still believes that the 2020 election was stolen and also remains the only Senator to vote against speeding up disability funding to ALS victims (his reason for doing so is here).  As Gleich wrote in her campaign brochure: As an athlete who has always used my platform to advocate for our people and our planet, I am constantly being told that change can't be made.  However, I have testified before committees in the U.S. House and Senate...I helped pass legislation that takes significant steps toward protecting our environment, that no one thought was possible...Our state is becoming younger, more diverse, and more urban.  The shift in demographics is coupled with a shift in attitude, particularly among younger and more independently-minded voters...I've been an underdog my whole life, with skeptics questioning my strength and bravery.  Yet, I've broken records and defied limits.  Now, I'm ready to take on a new challenge: shaking things up in the Senate.

    René Descartes wrote: Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).  But fortunately we can think and dream and often accomplish that which we imagine.  As the saying goes, impossible also says I'M-possible.  As for candidate Gleich, did I mention that she's young?  Someone in the Senate who's not 60?  Or 70?  Or 80?  Gee, imagine the possibilities...

P.S. Speaking of balance, Earth Day recently passed and this piece in The Virginia Quarterly may surprise you...worth a peek.  And I should note, my wife and I also need some balance so advance notice if these posts slow a bit...we're heading on vacation!

*Morton's neuroma, what the heck is that?  Quick question?  Are a few of your shoes too tight around the toes?  Any sort of pain starting to develop around the ball of one or both feet?  Do you have bunions?  So my surprise answer to all of those questions was yes, and the PT explained that wedged between those bones of your feet, heading to your toes, are nerves; and with tight shoes (and I do wear "wide" shoes for this reason, although the definition of wide can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer) each step can push those bones together until eventually they can begin irritating the nerves.  It's a common ailment so don't feel that you're alone if you've started to feel a bit of pain now and then (and yes, there are exercises to help relieve such pain).  But as the Cleveland Clinic noted, take care of it early since it could cause permanent nerve damage if left untreated.  Now, my PT recommended several inserts that address this issue, and there are lots of such inserts.  And while I haven't tried other inserts, I found a company in Germany that still hand-sews its inserts and have designed them to be anatomically correct, AND they are about half the price of most other inserts.  That said, do your research and pick an insert that may provide you the most comfort (the insert I chose was not the one the PT recommended, but I will shamelessly tell you that for me at least, it provided almost instant relief; I purchased the 3/4 insole for $21)...the insert in my case, by having a slight cushion under that portion near the balls of my feet, does the simple job of forcing my toes apart with each step; but again, do your own research.  Now I should note that I rarely promote a product but for me, this was quite amazing...and a final note, as with any sort of hard insert, these are replacing your existing insert so be sure to take out your original before adding a supporting insert.