A friend of mine emailed me a link to a blog written by a writer from M*A*S*H. Now, this friend, like many of them, know I’m a huge fan of M*A*S*H and so he will forward me things that, to other people, would seem inconsequential, but he knows that I’m also a writer, and would enjoy hearing the perspective of a person who wrote for the show. (You can read the link by clicking here.)
I loved reading this because I specifically remember this episode. I don’t just remember it because of how dramatic it is, or because of what the B-story is. (Watch a sitcom. 98% of them will have an important story and a secondary story, usually bordering on comic relief. A-story, B-story. It’s the formula to writing a sitcom.) I remember it because the medic in question is from Hartford, CT.
I grew up outside of Hartford, and I wasn’t thrilled with that. I remember as a high school graduate never wanting anything to do with where I came from. Funny words from a guy who between then and now moved back there no less than three times. Hell, I even dated a girl who lived (but was not from) the town I grew up in. And the truth is I find that over the past several years I am taking a pride in where I’m from. For better or worse it helped define who I am. And I still have a couple of dozen friends who live in the area. I’m going back there in a couple of weeks-for my vacation. If that doesn’t point out how much I do think about where I’m from and how much I love my friends, nothing will.
Pride is a sin, some people will tell you. But a level of it, an amount of it that helps define and power us, is important. And we find that pride in different things-whether it be our hometown, our job, our friends, our sports teams-to give us balance and strength to live as we know we should. My pride has been lacking, or to be more direct, I’ve been questioning myself a lot, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, what I’m accomplishing. In other words, the sorts of thing that make you post random drunken facebook updates.
I have a friend in town this week, and I was telling her about my friend sending me the link.I mentioned that I hadn’t been in contact with him in a while and when I replied I mentioned that I was acting again. I included a joke I’d made a few times in the last month: “Who knew I’d have to move to Key West to be a professional actor?”
Normally, I’d say that-or a joke like it-and blow it off. (I tend to be self deprecating.) But as I said it, I actually listened to myself, and thought about the truth of the statement. Ever since I was 12 years old, I dreamed of being a professional actor. I went to High School for it, I went to college for it, I moved to three different cities for it. And now that I was actually doing it, I was blowing it off like it was nothing important. I do the same thing about my writing. I have a friend who, every time he introduces me to someone new, mentions that I am a published author. I immediately start to defuse it by saying “Well, self published, and I haven’t sold that many copies of either book.” To paraphrase kids these days, WTF??
We define ourselves by so many things that we expect to happen, that when the truth comes around we don’t even notice it. Everyone has dreams of how they think their lives will turn out, and yet I know a bunch of people who, when they look back at their lives, they both got exactly what they wanted AND they got it in a way they never expected. And most of them say they are happier now with how things turned out than they they thought they would have been.
Pride can be a dangerous thing. It can be an ego driven wedge to separate you from everyone who is important to you. But sometimes it is important. Like when you need to remember you’re actually living the life you always dreamt you would.
As a professional actor and writer.
PopcornJackTerry 