What We Leave Behind
Changing what's inside to impact what's outside
The first time I ever improvised in public, I was 12 years old. I was in a basement jazz club on the upper east side of New York City. Jimmy Slyde was hosting a weekly session which brought together some of New York’s best musicians and tap dancers. And there I was – little, green, and nervous.
I remember much of what happened before I began dancing – how Slyde introduced me, our brief banter on the stage, how he directed the musicians, and how he left me to dance on my own. I don’t remember anything after that. The stress of having to make everything up as I went along did something to my ability to remember what all I did. I do remember not knowing how to answer all the questions after I was done. “How do you feel?” I don’t know. “Did you enjoy that?” Not quite sure yet. People clapped. I didn’t know how to take that either. I couldn’t find language to describe all the newness of the experience, and my role in it.
There are a few things that one experiences as an improvisational tap dancer:
The need to make a lot of choices, continually. Once the music starts, we’re on.
The immediate feedback of those choices. We hear what we do.
Being observed while making these choices. We’re performing in front of an audience – they see and hear what we do, too.
Being judged by the choices we make. The audience either claps or they don’t.
The inability to go back and make different choices. Time moves on with an impersonal disregard for our feelings.
We’re not allowed to stop. We can’t stop dancing, until the music stops.
These experiences are admittedly quite intense. Rest from that context is necessary in order to maintain some level of well-being. Resting upon something greater than my ability to succeed in that context is necessary in order to experience true rest in the midst of it all (see: Nuach). However, there is also a lot of good that can come from such an intense experience.
Improvisational tap dancing is to choice-making as Formula One racing is to daily driving. Having lived such an intense experience of choice making (for a long time), I’ve come to think a certain way about how choice-making works, and how to train for it. I work this out in depth in the project What We Leave Behind, but this week I’m challenging myself to find even more concise language.
We Are Always Making Choices
As a human being, we are in a context of continual choice-making. Do we stay or go, to the right or left, speak or remain silent? Do we say yes or no? There is little space in life in which choices are not presented to us, or in which we don’t actually have a choice. There are obviously different kinds of choices. There are choices with varying degrees of impact – what color shirt do I wear today? Or should I marry this person? Other choices take varying degrees of thought – should I press the brakes while driving and approaching a stop sign? Should I say yes to this job offer? The spectrum of importance, urgency, and thoughtfulness that choices seem to land on is one way that we prioritize our energy, attention, and propensity for action. We can’t spend the same amount of time and energy on every single choice, so we prioritize. Doing this may seem to belie the number of choices we really make, and the fundamental importance of each one. It can. But taken from another view, prioritization of choices highlights our own limited nature and the idea that we simply can’t bring the same level of attention to every choice we make in life.
We Always Have Impact
As an individual in the world – living in relationship to ourselves, others, and our environment – there is no place that we may find ourselves where we don’t have an impact. Simply by existing, we have an impact. Wherever we are, we take up space that would otherwise be empty, or filled with someone or something else. The common cultural trend is to fan the flames of desire towards impact – asking, “Are you making an impact in your life?” Such fanning belies the fact that every single individual already has an impact within the sphere of their effective will. Some may have larger impact than others, but that is not the question. When thinking about impact, scale is less important than quality. Does the impact we have yield towards the good or the bad? Regardless of scale, the question of quality is always important, and always present. At no point is bad impact okay simply because it’s happening on a small scale. It also should be noted here that the impact that we can observe from our own choices leads to a feedback loop. We observe the impact our choices have and review the quality or effectiveness of our choice on account of it.
We Are Continually Being Formed
Our choices, and the observable impact they have, provide a kind of cycle of formation. We make a choice, wait to observe its impact, and then decide either to continue with similar choices, or experiment with different ones. We are always in this process – choosing, observing, and adjusting. The outcome of this process is the person we become. We all become a particular kind of person. The kind of person who makes particular kinds of choices. The language often used for what is being formed is our “character.” Outside of personality, one’s character is said to hold the virtues (and desires) which undergird our will – the part of ourselves that decides and moves us to action or inaction.
This process of formation affects much more than our actions. It shows up in how we think and feel, how we relate to others and our environment, and in the more complete vision of who we are in the deepest sense – our soul.
We Are Habitual
Not only are we always making choices, and always having impact, but we are also caught up in habits. These habits are an outgrowth of our formation. They continually reinforce the choices that we make and the impact that we have – for better or worse. These are not only limited to commonly attributed habits, say like smoking, but include habits of thought, place, relationship, feeling, action, and more. One challenge around habits is that by the time we are aware enough of the habits we have, they are well entrenched. Given the obvious observation that not all habits are good, and by extension not all formations are good, we must inquire about the notion that not all choices are good, and therefore not all impact is good.
What then?
If we desire to make good choices, to impact the world around us for good, to leave behind a better world than what we found, then we must endeavor to transform ourselves. Not at the level of actions only, but something much deeper. We have to first believe that transformation is possible – that our habits can be reworked, and our character reformed. The process of transformation is one of practice. We engage in activities that we can do so that our habitual actions are interrupted. The interruption allows for old and destructive habits to be set aside, or more realistically deliberately put to death. Then, and only then can new habits and ways of living be born of goodness and love.
What We Leave Behind
Imagine for a moment a world that is moving towards being a living expression of goodness and love. Don’t skip over that. Sit with it, and let the idea occupy your mind for a little longer than may feel comfortable. Cultivating a vision for such a world provides the inspiration necessary to endeavor to do the work. And we all have work we can do. We work to change from the inside, so that in the face of all that happens in the world – war, famine, insecurity – our natural and organic choices and responses will be born of goodness and love. As each of us endeavors to dream of such a world (and being that kind of person), we eagerly approach the work of change and transformation, and trust that the world we leave behind will be better than the one we found when we first opened our eyes.