What do we have left over?
Say what?
My mother cooks for a football team on every special occasion. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Birthdays – you name it, if there is an opportunity to cook, she’ll take it. If she had the time, she would probably cook a meal that way every day – it doesn’t even have to be dinner! The love and care she puts into the meal is directly connected to her giving nature. But there is a problem. As good as the meal is – and it is really good – we always end up with tons of leftovers. It seems that it doesn’t even matter how many people are at the table. There is always more than enough food for everyone, and more than enough left over. The running joke in my family in fact, is whether we’ll be able to fit all the leftovers back in the fridge or not. It really is a thing.
Leftovers can come in handy as the abundance of a special occasion fills the natural need of the days to come, with little extra work. The benefit of leftovers can spill over into the lives of neighbors, too. An extra plate shared or given, can be a welcomed surprise. All this talk about food is making me hungry.
But leftovers don’t only exist when it comes to food. In athletics, a large part of the work of training is building up the stamina to endure the competition physically, mentally, and emotionally. The goal is to be able to have something left in the tank for the final minutes of the game. Spend everything you have too early and you won’t make it, no matter how good you are. Don’t spend enough and you’ll never know what would have happened if you actually gave what you had to give at the time of need. In a competitive environment, most things are weighed in comparison to another competitor or team. You must have more than the other person or team to win. More stamina equals more resources. More resources equals a higher likelihood of success, especially when coupled with skill and efficacy. What if there is a tie, overtime, penalty kicks? In athletics, you train to have enough leftover, just in case.
There is a similar idea in the performing arts. In the performing arts, particularly those of an improvisational nature, the idea of being a wellspring of creative ideas is equivalent to having stamina in sport. It is creative endurance. If you train for hours of creative endurance, and then are called to execute only 30 seconds – a solo on a music track for example – you have hours left in the tank. In truth, you have hours worth of potential material you can imaginatively sort through and pick from for your 30 seconds. There is quite a bit more one can mine in this line of thinking, but that is not our primary purpose here.
It is enough for us to have these ideas of how we might think of leftovers. Whether it be food, physical, mental, emotional, or creative resources, what we have left over after our initial intended expenditure has been completed can be a blessing to us and others. In some cases, it must become a blessing or it will spoil. We can’t always wait for the perfect opportunity, person, time, or place to give. This truth is a simple reminder that having avenues for giving already worked out might be a good groove to have or develop.
That said, we are still missing something. We’ve discussed particular things and areas of life that we can account for having resources in, the giving of those resources, and still having resources leftover. But there is another way of thinking about what is leftover. Something that might allow us to reshape our view on the resources we have, what is most important, and what we will be left with in the end. In opening up this kind of thinking I will begin with a story.
In December of 2017, I had the opportunity to workshop my first solo show, Rising to the Tap. Before the show I was backstage in my dressing room with my entire creative team – director, production designer, sound designer, and lighting designer. This was opening night, after all, and we all had put in a lot of work to get this project to this moment. We were together to share the excitement of the moment. The show was about to be birthed. One by one, everyone left to their respective positions, all having something to do during the show to make it happen. I too, went to my starting position in the wings. I stood there in the darkness for a few minutes, full of anticipation.
The autobiographical journey I was about to embark on filled me with a flurry of emotion. The lights dimmed and I walked out onto the stage. Seventy-five minutes of storytelling and dancing transpired, as I journeyed through the stories of my life with the audience of this premiere performance. And, in what almost felt like a blink of an eye, it was over. I was taking a bow, the audience was applauding, and I was leaving the stage, going back to my dressing room. While there, for what felt longer than it actually was, I was alone again. This time though, I was spent. I had given all that I had to give, and it felt like there was little left.
Then, one by one, my creative team returned. One by one, they came in for a hug. Congratulations and smiles were shared among all of us. But there was a different quality to these interactions after the show. The only energy I had left was to simply be present. I couldn’t really give anymore. Then again, with those cats in that room at that time, I didn’t have to give much anyway. They had a sense of what had just happened. They knew where I was, and they allowed me to just be. Even celebrated it.
That’s just it. After all the work is done, once we’ve learned all we can, after the project is complete, once the time we have is over, there is still something left over. You may be thinking that I’m going to launch into a conversation about life after our time here, or heaven. That is an important conversation to have, and the questions are well worth pursuing. For our purposes it isn’t necessary to go there just yet. We shouldn’t have to wait until we think about dying to worry about what we have left. Especially when what we have left over is the most important thing we have.
After the resources are spent, once we’ve said all we have to say, after we’ve earned all we can earn, once we’ve spent all we can spend, we are left with ourselves. We are left with the “who” that we are when we can’t do anything else. When no one else is pulling at us, or pushing on us, in thought or action we are left with ourselves. We are left with our inner world, our character, and the way we have come to naturally interact with the world around us. We are our own left over. When we are done showing up for everyone and everything else. We are what is left.
If you take this proposition as true, there is one very big question that arises. Are you at peace, even happy with the person that you are left with?
The conversation continues with this week’s Asking the Questions.