productive uncertainty
How did it go??
Recently I was out on an audition. I went into a small room with a table and chairs, where a few people were already sitting. We said hello, I spoke words aloud from a given piece of text while pretending to be someone else, I was re-directed and I spoke them again, a little differently, we had some friendly chit chat, and I left. Those are the facts as I remember them. It is exceptionally difficult to write this paragraph without telling you what you actually want to know about the audition, what we all want to know, which is how it went.
When you tell your friends and loved ones that you had an audition, what’s the first thing they ask?
Of course. How did it go?
how did it go?
It’s why, when I teach an intro meditation class and I give the definition of mindfulness meditation - Bringing our attention to the present moment and noticing what arises without judgment or bias - I always make note of what a radical act it actually is. Contrary to popular belief, there’s nothing in there about ridding your mind of thoughts. But to just sit and watch what comes up without judgment or bias?! Radical! We are primed for judgment, and in recent years certain powerful technology-makers have exploited our biology to turn our judgment-reflexes on turbo.
You watch something on Netflix. Thumbs up or down? You read a piece of writing you agree with. Confirmation bias - Like! You go to a new restaurant. Please Like us on Facebook and Leave us a Review! Your friend gets engaged and posts a picture of The Ring. Love!!!!! Your friend makes their Broadway debut and posts a picture from backstage. You’re really happy for them and also comparison mind is a drag because you’re unemployed right now and honestly jealous but there’s no button for that so Love!!
Has anyone found the “neutral” button? The “I’m not sure”? Or the “I’m reserving judgment”?
There’s actually another form of mindfulness (there are four foundations of mindfulness, and mindfulness of the breath, most frequently practiced in the West, is only one part of one of them) called Mindfulness of Feeling (Tone). This practice is not about feelings as emotions per se, but rather we spend the practice noting whether each present moment experience is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. It’s another way to gain insight into our experience. We begin to notice the more subtle flavor of each moment, and the different kinds of thoughts and actions that stem from our feeling “bad” versus when we feel “good.”
So I left the audition and watched my mind immediately begin to grasp at judgments - on either side! - about how it went. It went okay! Whew! I did some of what I wanted to do, and they laughed at that one part, and I really felt like I took the direction. - or - Ugh. That wasn’t great. I didn’t feel as connected as I have before, and they didn’t laugh as much as I hoped they would. His face at the end wasn’t super impressed. Sigh.
Back and forth it went, like a swinging door, vacillating between the two sides. I just watched it go back and forth, back and forth. It was like some part of me inside was screaming Just tell me how to feel about this!! I needed to be able to put it in a box, to form a story around it that I could tell people, and myself, later. But instead I just continued to watch it, to stay uncertain. And after awhile it subsided, as all things do, and I put the whole thing behind me and moved on with my life, without ever really classifying it in any concrete way.
Because let’s be honest, how many times have we judged what happened and been wrong? Twenty years in New York, I know I’ve been wrong a lot. They hated me - ughhhhhh I knew it. I really biffed the high note. He wasn’t even paying attention. Callback! Or Yes I NAILED that! Get the champagne ready! Aaaaaaaaand crickets.
And on either side, I would spend the next days in the energetic reverberation of whatever it was. Waiting for the phone to ring, imagining my meteoric rise to fame. The thoughts and actions that resulted from my “pleasant” experience. Or on the other side, mired in self-doubt and self-blame. The certainty that I knew what had happened in that room - that there even was one, non-subjective “thing” that had happened! - ended up robbing me of actually experiencing so many moments that followed. In those times, I had created a very solid story, and even as I gave lip service to “letting it go” I was actually clinging to it, reliving it, and losing out on the present.
One day not long ago, I got an email from the artistic director. A really kind one, the type we all should get after every audition, letting me know the results. In this case, they’d gone in another direction, but they love my work, and they want to work together again sometime.
And of course, it was gratifying. Who doesn’t want to get a kind and complimentary email? But because I hadn’t been clinging to my own judgments, it didn’t land as either a relief, Oh thank God I didn’t make an ass of myself like I thought or a death knell, I guess I screwed that one up again after all. It was just a really nice email with a piece of information. So I was able to write a genuine, well-wishing response with ease, and continue on with my life.
I heard this phrase productive uncertainty the other day and knew immediately what I would write here. I could just as easily have used it in my last post about living the questions onstage, because all of these teachings are about how to live, and the most masterful performances are fully alive. But I decided to write about offstage life this time because in order to stay sane in this line of work, and keep the channel open, we need to not only know how to let go, but how to get on with it. We could let uncertainty stop us in our tracks, like a freeze response. Or we can get comfortable with the inherent uncertainty that underpins our entire existence and learn how to ride those waves.
Staying productively uncertain, we realize that we can’t really be sure what actually went down in the room where it happens. Maybe they liked it, maybe they didn’t, but in the end, their opinion is no more accurate than ours and is only a fraction of the decision to cast us or not. Staying productively uncertain, we can be open to what might happen next. We leave room for other people to have their own experiences (and judgments) without letting it affect and color our lives. We can live our experiences as they come and go without getting stuck in the past or the future.
Staying productively uncertain, we can notice our own habits of behavior that come up when we’re feeling a certain way. We can let an experience be pleasant or unpleasant without making it mean something about us, our future, our worth. Staying productively uncertain, we can give ourselves grace and maybe walk into, and out of, the next room with a little less suffering, a little more happiness.