There are days on this magical adventure when I feel that everything is going so wondrously right. I have a few special meetings with incredible people or a series of phone calls where pieces of the grand puzzle fall miraculously into place; maybe we make powerful progress one day on conceptualizing the first music video and the path forward to tangible success is deliciously clear ... I crawl into bed just radiating with optimism.
And then there are those Thursdays when I wake up and realize I basically haven’t left my office-apartment since Monday. I’ve been catching up on seemingly endless email, mucking about in the logistics of survival and sustainability. There hasn’t been one game-changing phone call, nothing I’m doing seems to be leading anywhere useful, and I can’t see a potential breakthrough moment for Ash Ruiz's music project for at least the next 4 months. ... So I just kinda feel like there’s a whole lot of movement, but essentially no progress. I start questioning either what I’m doing or at least how I’m doing it.
I go through those gyrations all the time.
There are literally sunny moments when I see completely that everything is unfolding in beautifully, unassailably, deliciously, unimaginably, joyously, blissfully perfect order. And thank you Life for choosing me.
Then a haze just as suddenly descends inside which I may lose all sense of direction and purpose. Well, it’s perhaps not THAT dramatic; I don’t lose ALL sense of direction and purpose. I confess I do enjoy exaggerating for the sake of poetry and storytelling flair.
Anyway, uncertainty can unnerve my “Tiger-Taurus” instinct for grounded stability at times. Especially when my bank account is only diminishing and I just paid $95 to fill my gas tank three days after I paid $85 to do the same.
A big part of me wants to know that what I’m doing today matters; that my actions and choices are effectively taking me towards fulfilling the dreams I dream.
Yet I know I don’t ever really get to know whether what I’m doing in this moment is leading me where I hope it’s leading me. Truly, I just don’t ever get to know.
I have learned over the years to be more comfortable with uncertainty. I highly recommend cultivating this trait, since uncertainty is the constant reality we’re all living with anyway, whether or not we’re aware of it.
I heard a fascinating RADIOLAB PODCAST yesterday about a girl who lost control of her face during a job interview. Yes that’s right ... she lost control of her face. Her brain’s “basil ganglia” started misfiring, mid-interview, due to some nausea medication she was taking. Her neck started turning her head slowly to the right, even as her inner voice started insisting it stop doing so, that it would be far more appropriate to FACE the interviewer. Then her eyebrows starting arcing fiercely up her forehead as if she had just been thrown into an involuntary state of extreme surprise. And then the rest of her face - eyes, lips, nose, chin, cheeks - it all started contracting, tightening in upon itself as if, as she described, her entire face was caught in the grips of an excruciating charlie-horse.
In one moment, this woman lost the ability to control her face. If there’s one thing I had been subconsciously certain about before hearing this story, it was that I could control my own face. Apparently even THAT is not certain.
Uncertainty is the truth of our existence. We only live with the ILLUSION of certainty, never the actual experience of it.
Yesterday, after watching an Abraham-Hicks video, a “rampage of relief”, I put a few powerful reminders on the Ash Ruiz project outline wall:
- We Can’t Get It Wrong
- It’s Ok to Never Figure It All Out
- We Can Only Get It Right
You see, we do have a plan to launch Ash’s solo music career. There are surely some huge unknowns, and honestly even the things I think I know, such as “his debut album will come out in April”, well, I don’t in fact truly know ... until it happens and I can look and say “see, it happened!” I can’t be certain.
Wildly successful Actor/director Tyler Perry recently said in a youtube video his remarkable success is only due to one thing: ”nothing but the Grace of God.” That’s another way of saying it’s ok to never figure everything out. All we can do is keep showing up, keep believing in ourselves and following the breadcrumbs our dreams have laid out for us to follow ... even when it seems someone came before and ate all the breadcrumbs, leaving us directionless and confused. Then I guess we just gotta keep walking till we catch site of more dream-dropped breadcrumbs.
Honestly, I don’t know how this blog can serve you right now. I simply need to write about this tonight, because this is one of those moments of great uncertainty ... of KNOWING that I don’t know.
I work with artists who do brilliant, inspired work; the kind of artists who really can’t do anything other than express their art because it just saturates their entire existence.
Today I met with the incredible Chilean singer-songwriter Jacqueline Fuentes, whose music has been featured in the world-famous Putomayo albums. Last week I met with another amazing artist who will be featured in an upcoming Judd Apatow movie. Like Ash, these two other brilliantly talented, professional artists expressed to me sheer exasperation at not knowing how to create traction for their careers. How to move tangibly along the path towards their own dreams.
As a thoughtful manager, It excites me to help construct the bridge that brings their inspired visions to ground on planet earth. I love making sense of where things stand right now and putting together a plan and then working that plan.
However, in the midst of working that plan, life plays all sorts of tricks. Nothing is ever really in our control. Making room for magic to unfold in our lives typically involves getting out of the way, allowing the unfathomable wisdom of Life to direct the action. It probably always involves embracing uncertainty.
We can only keep showing up and doing the work before us in every moment. And when the work ain’t obvious or things are bogging down, well, that’s probably just a good day to go outside and play.
It's ok to not know. That's always the genuine truth, anyway.
While Frank Sinatra is generally credited with being the director of the Rat Pack, it actually began with Humphrey Bogart when he served as the common tie in a cluster of friends who normally party mutually.
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