Light

"The poem...is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.  And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see--it is, rather, a light by which we may see--and what we see is life."--Robert Penn Warren

Tonight is our last performance of The Laramie Project at LHS.  Directing this show has been an incredibly emotional experience for me not only because of the subject matter but because, during this process, I have come to appreciate a part of myself that I do not always see as positive.

I am a very emotional person.  Very.  Commercials, movies, stories people tell, stories I read, the look on a sad dog's face, just about anything can make me tear up.  I have a heightened sense of empathy--I learned there's a word for this, it's called being an empath or being an empathic person--which means I soak up the energy of those around me and reflect it back, sort of like an emotional mirror.  This is great when I am surrounded by joyful, creative, positive energy--as I have been much of the past few weeks--but it can be exhausting, too, when the energy surrounding me is negative or anxious or fearful.

Any time I direct a show, I try to settle the students on the nights of performances with a positive message that, sometimes, takes the form of a guided meditation.  I ask them to close their eyes, hold hands, breathe deep, and focus on the light within them, the positive message they're sending, the joyful act of creation of which they are a part.  As I say these things to them, I am, of course, speaking to myself, my voice rippling over them in waves, carrying them to what I hope is a more centered, peaceful place from which to bring the show we're working on to life.

And now, after weeks of nervous anxiety, elated successes, tearful worries, and joyous celebration, it is almost over.  I find I am terribly tired and--while happy to have been the director of the process as well as the overseer of the product--I am grateful the end is near.  This does not mean I haven't enjoyed the work--I have, immensely--it's actually been one of the best processes I've been part of in that I gave up so much control and just let it all breathe itself into existence that I never totally lost myself, which is a first.  But, like the Robert Penn Warren quotation at the beginning of this entry, I am ready to allow room for something else to make my life meaningful.  And that something is me.  I want to find meaning not just in the work I do, but in myself.  My shining, emotive, overly sensitive, often anxious little self.

I am ready to accept the myth of myself as poem, as poetry, as motion, as music, and see what kind of light will shine once all the other noise and light quiets and dims.  So, tonight, when the final bow is taken, the last set piece struck, the lights turned out for the final time on this run, I believe a new light will begin to sparkle in the distance.  May it be just bright enough to shine me home.