I love a good confusing yet alliterative title.
I am going back to school in a few months and, while I have enough life experience to know that a few years of school doesn't necessarily determine the course of your life, I keep feeling like somehow I'm cementing the fact that directing theatre is what I was put on this earth to do.
That said, I've thought about and am drawn to many other things in addition to theatre. The most consistent of these daydreams has been being a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist and, if we're in Pony World* and my math block weren't an issue, a neuroscientist of some kind.
I love the human psyche, and I especially love hearing how the brain affects our experiences and choices. For a long time, it seems that it was the constant debate of nature (physiological factors) vs. nurture (evironment). Recently, however, I keep hearing more and more about how experiences can actually change the structure of your brain, or the concept of neuroplasticity. In other words, nature IS nurture.
Babies whose parents talk to them more and read them stories, etc, end up having significant differences in the language centers of their brains. Years of drug addiction can actually alter a grown person's brain so that it's harder for them to regulate dopamine, seratonin, and all those other feel-good chemicals. The idea of neuroplasticity can either seem bleak- if your parents screwed up, you can actually end up brain damaged- or hopeful- a person can continue to change their brain and their way of being throughout their whole life.
Thinking about that kind of thing gets me lit up in a similar way that theatre does. I don't feel like I'm making the wrong choice going back to school to get a Masters of Fine Arts in Directing, but I do find it interesting that there are other lives I could have lead, and other things that could have made me happy, too.
What about you? I don't get too many hits, but if you're reading this, go ahead and leave me a comment- what would you be if you weren't what you are? I'm talking something that is in no way related to what you're doing for a living (or studying) right now.
*Pony World = A world where you can have anything you want, including a pony. Coined by the fabulous Pony World Theatre
linguistics... I've never been any good with words, but the beginnings and structure of language excites me almost as much as music or anthropology. Just like the debate if language is innate in humans or not? Or just where words have originally come from, I find to be sexy. I feel as if it's the one area that I'm not great with at all, and I struggle daily still just saying words correctly. And let's face it, I could use a grammar lesson or two.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that drew me to theatre was that there were people who happy to have me around. That idea has followed me, and it's related a little to the political ideology you know I espouse.
ReplyDeleteI often imagine it would be wonderful to live multiple lives. Sometimes I even think, if I have a bunch of them, that it would be good to have one that was entirely a waste. One where I do a lot of drugs and go to parties and don't worry one iota whether I'm making the world a better place. Just one of the lives, though, if I have a zillion. I don't imagine I'd like to repeat.
But in the end, the most realistic ideas are that I'd be some sort of community organizer, maybe like Barack Obama. In pony world, there'd be a generational starship, setting out to colonize a planet in some other solar system, and the world would have decided that theatre is the best way to discover unique solutions to social problems, and I'd be employed as a member of the ship's theatre company, as we figure out how the new society will look.