Room to breath

Monday mornings are always a little weird for me. I often feel down on a Monday because I realize I have a responsibility to create my week and that I don't have an acting job to go to! The first thing I do to tackle this feeling is to go for a run. Even if I really would rather have a cup of coffee, I know that I will feel happier if I make my body sweat and strain and pant for half an hour- I mean who wouldn't be happy when that was over? Then I feel proud of myself. Like I have accomplished something. Even if it is just running to the Santa Monica Pier and back again and I still end up in exactly the same place. I guess I feel in a slightly different emotional place. So I'm feeling a lot better now and I am sitting in my sweaty running clothes. Bliss!

Last night, I dined at the beautiful Shutters Hotel with my beloved Langford* and my Aunt and her boyfriend. We drank champagne and red wine and I ate a delicious grilled salmon whilst overlooking Santa Monica beach. Earlier in the day I had gone for a run on that same beach but could barely finish it. I was really struggling for some reason. I was glad to bump into an actor friend and cut it short by 5 minutes. Could it have been the old fashioned cocktails I had consumed the night before in a French bar? Maybe.

Saturday night had been particularly interesting. I convinced Langford to come out with me to meet up with my spiritual healer Jo* (and leader of the miracle class) and her fiancee. They were celebrating a friend's birthday and had invited me along. When we arrived we met Jo's father who was visiting from out of state. It ended up that we spoke to Jo and her father for most of the night. We discussed the meaning of love, pre-determinism, the concept of fate, whether a change in perspective actually alters the physical reality of situations and our favorite books. I loved Jo's father's description of what love meant to him. It was something along the lines of 'no judgment for the person in front of me, giving them my full acceptance and understanding'. My eyes were brimming with tears and my, at times misanthropic, Langford responded with;
"Well, what would you do with Hitler?"
He likes to bring that up. Just when I think I'm winning an argument, Langford will say "well, could you apply that to the holocaust?" In fact, in this case, it was a good point and Jo's father took it. He wasn't sure what he would have done had he been in charge of the world and responsible for punishing Adolf himself. Could he give him love and acceptance? SHOULD he give him love and acceptance? Moral compasses waiver in the face of such evil. At the end of the night, Jo's father said that meeting Langford and me was the highlight of his trip. He told us we were wonderful. It brought tears to my eyes. Despite the cocktails, we had had such a meaningful and interesting conversation.

We had also discussed whether we really have free will. Langford's argument is that you will only ever make the choice you make because of your upbringing and experience and type of person you are. You would never make a different choice to the one you took. Jo discussed changing the way you view a situation and how that can ultimately make a situation change. She suggests it is in our power to see things differently and therefore to make different choices. I continued this discussion with a casting director friend I met for coffee yesterday. We went to the ultra hip 'intelligentsia' coffee shop on abbot kinney in Venice. While we sat on the cool but uncomfortable concrete seating, she said that perhaps you make choices based on how well you know yourself. That you may live for a time, in only one half of who you really are and therefore only see a thin slice of the choices and opportunities available to you. If you are able to clear yourself and learn from your experiences, you open yourself up to wider possibilities and you have more options available and you may make different choices because you are know choosing from a truer perspective. I like this concept. It is similar to what I believe.

I think we all have a core, true self that never alters and along this core are little doors. Some doors are opened and some closed. The formation and shape of these doors represent our personality. As we go through life our experiences open and close different doors for us, therefore slightly altering our personalities and perspective. Despite a vast array of experiences, we can only ever alter so much based on the doors we have. Whether they are opened or closed, the core 'true self' never alters. My aim is to open as many doors as possible so that my true self has plenty of room to breath.