Life does actually work out a lot of the time...why don't we celebrate that?

Happy New Year :

I've been experiencing a feeling of unrest. And instead of stewing in private, I want to share it. Shed some light on it and hear what other people are feeling. I'm looking for resonance, connection and why not ask the people I talk to all the time: you. lol...

I'm experiencing a period in which I'm questioning all my goals, dreams and placement in life. It would be easy to name this set of feelings: early mid-life crisis. But that would be a cop out: A quick fear-based assumption that results in me not questioning and really taking on what is happening. That would prevent me from using these uncomfortable feelings as a recipe for inviting in growth and change.

I thought I was alone, but as I peruse the films, TV shows that are popping up all over Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and I desperately search for hopeful storylines, instead I find this:

What is our obsession with making every film have sad or tragic endings?

Life does actually work out a lot of the time...why don't we celebrate that?

I'll see you in my dreams is filled with great actors in a perversely sad film. I could watch Blythe Danner & Sam Elliot just eat rice for 2 hours because they are extraordinary actors; filled with a sense of clarity, truth and joy that I find intoxicating as an artist and a human being. But, I cannot believe reviewer after reviewer praised the film as perfect even though it's version of life seems cruel and ironically unforgiving.

So if a story isn't filled with the "uselessness" of life, it doesn't get a good review?

Really?

That sucks.

I rebuke you, Satan!

I refuse to sum up my life and the lives of others that way. Because if that's the case, why bother?

Why show up in this game called life and even bother to try reaching for joy; stepping out on faith and making ourselves vulnerable to possible pain, but mountains of joy.

That requires courage, but if you cop out and just say,

"Oh, well, it's just going to turn out to be shit and I won't get what I love and long for anyway..."

Then you set yourself up for not even trying. That's cowardly, safe and ultimately creates bitterness and cynicism and vulnerability and joy do not hang out with those dismal wenches.

This was at the end of weekend when I was nursing a cold and trying to find something where the acting was truthful, deep and the struggle for joy real and triumphant. I found nothing on TV, Film, Theatre where this was happening and I went everywhere where storytelling is thriving. Then I realized as I looked through my VUDU, Amazon, Hulu, Showtime, HBO, Netflix, Starz, Acorn TV watchlists and read reviews of all the plays I've seen in the last 18 months that the story was all the same. Sadness, cynicism and tragedy.

No one was winning.

Everyone was being defeated by dark human nature and the relentless tragedy of life.

AND to make it worse, the stories winning all of the awards, getting amazing reviews were the ones in which the lowest part of human nature is celebrated. Places where we're killing, maiming, torturing and getting over on each other time after time.

And I thought hmmm...I'm not the only one feeling defeated these days by life's march.

This ennui has a legitimate source.

When you look at the news, it's not so happy.

Our political campaigns are filled with people spewing foul, fear-filled ideas that create discord with others and assume the worst in people. The messages I hear over and over again are not ones of people trying to understand each other and solve problems, but ones in which blame seems to be the key to solving all troubling questions.

Really, is that the best we got, people?

Really?

That can't be it.

Hiding behind religious ideals that have been twisted into excuses to hate our neighbor, seems totally counterproductive.

For my money, if an idea doesn't create harmony, understanding and a better way of solving problems, then it's a faulty idea or the person interpreting the idea has insidious motives. In either case, they got to get to stepping.

If goodness and light are not the final goal and end result, then that idea needs to be re-thought and tossed because it's not working.

As I began to mull over these thoughts, I then realized that when the times are so dark, the feelings I'm having are about forcing me to look for my light.

And you know what?

That's what gratitude movements are about. That's what vulnerability movements are about. That's what questioning family values and giving people the same civil rights that we cherish are all about. Forcing the law to live up to the promise of freedom and justice for all. This is what the laws of our constitution are all about.

Aren't we passed writing down good ideas about freedom that only apply to a few?

I mean the pilgrims did that to the First Americans. We're free, you're not, so give us your land and get lost. We all agree that wasn't cool.

Then once a bunch of my Scottish ancestors (Thompson is the surname given to me by a Scottish sailor working off his indentured servitude who strolled through Cuba & the Bahamas running away from British oppression) came here to get away from oppression to become a part of a nation who based it's constitution on the right to freedom for all men except slaves and women who were not really whole human beings after all maybe 3/5ths. We did that and it's haunted us every since.

Haven't we gotten over that yet?

Haven't we grown wiser and more compassionate?

After all, you can't wave flags and pretend to be freedom's voice and conscience, but then deny freedom to others. Sort of doesn't work that way karmically.

I remember being on a first date in which a lovely, smoking-hot, 6'5" (what can I say, I like to climb trees) white guy talked about my looks and then proceeded to dis President Obama and try to get me to agree with him. Now, I was the only black person in an Upper West Side all white and Jewish sushi bar. And I smiled and said,

"Dude, I just met you. I will most definitely lose my black card if I sit up her and dis the first Black president in a room full of white people and a white man I just met. Cut me some slack. I'm laughing, but I'm straight up serious. President O gets props for getting white and black people to get over 400 years of history and bring us together. That's all I got to say"

He then, said: " But I don't see your color and I thought by being upfront, I was seeing you. Not just a black person."

Me: "Uhm, dude. I'm not JUST a black person. What is that?

I'm black. I like being black. I don't want you to get over seeing my color. Its what makes me cute, interesting, resilient, fierce and why you're sitting across from me grinning...so let's move on."

Then he goes on to say,

"I just don't understand why these gay people gotta make their problems our problems. They can be gay, but why do they have to get married. I mean, just be gay and be quiet."

Then I say,

"Well, they need to be able to get married, because when an interracial gay couple are the parents of a black child and that black child is in the hospital, both parents should have the right to be at their child's side and make decisions about their care. I was raised by a gay black man and a gay white german man. Everywhere we went, my white gay uncle had his role in my life questioned. And that's total bullshit, because when all the straight parents abdicated responsibility during the divorce, it was the gay white uncle who stepped up and started doing parenting with unconditional love. He was the primary parental, nurturing figure in my life and if I'm a kid sitting up in ICU, he gets to say he is my parent and sit next to me and take care of me. But because they could not legally get married that's not what happened. And that sucks that the person I felt closest to and who had truly been there for me, was legally not considered a parent when he in fact was the only person in my life acting like a goddamn parent. Yo, when the straight people start showing their asses, it's always the gay uncles and lesbian aunts who show up and take up the responsibility of parenting. And that has always been the case in my life. My gay relatives always showed up and taught me the meaning of family. It's not blood, it concern backed up with taking responsibility for the care and nurturing of the children. So, That's why they need to be able to get married. Because they need the same civil rights that are protected under the legal institution of marriage that every other American gets so they can raise the goddamn children that the straight people seem unable or unwilling to do."

He just sat there. And I'm thinking, you're so wrapped up in your anger, that you haven't even seen me. You have gone to the darkest side of each subject in under 15 minutes. What's that about?

And that's what we're all feeling, that sense of WTF! Why is there so much dissension, mistrust and ill-will and a unwillingness to see beyond our troubles and struggles. Where is the compassion, the empathy? Why does the basic idea of providing good education, healthcare and jobs that pay a livable wage twisted into fear-based, irrational assumptions that communism or socialism or some sort of dictatorial government is out to get us.

Is the right to happiness and stability inherent in all religious teachings? Doesn't a society need to provide it's people with the tools to create family, have real healthcare, shelter, food, clothing and a good education without having to be millionaires to do it?

Not give those things away for free, but give people the tools to be able to access that life of freedom? I mean isn't that the basis of every religious teaching?

Then it seems to me that how we take the basic assumption of good and turn it into it's alright to kill each other or shut anyone out of the promise for any reason our beliefs tell us is good is sorta insane.

If life is precious and all humans deserve love, then there is never a good reason to kill someone or deny them the basic rights that preserve our freedoms and ability to thrive.

This is just basic. So I thought. It's time to turn off any messages that do not reap goodness. It's time to find some messages that dismantle the negativity, pettiness that are being presented to me in every corner of our society and replace them with messages that feed me. Because right now, I feel a part of the dissension and cynicism and that's not how my dreamlife was ever constructed in my imagination.

I started to look for ideas that fed me when I knew writing was my path. That I could use storytelling and it's chief tool of empathy to create pictures of human beings in struggle to find their best selves even in the midst of us all acting out in very ugly ways.

I wanted to tell stories about us reaching for the light each time the world grew darker.

That's the process I outline in my TED Talk, Re-Write Your Story.

I talk about how someone else's story of who you're supposed to be, what you're supposed to believe is possible for you should never trump your story about what you want your life to look like.

I called the process DreamingOutLoud. And essentially, I found a way to turn off the messages being sent my way and to live much more intentionally. I learned how to define what made me happy, whole, complete and serving my highest purpose through this process. And from this process, I learned two major things:

1. I was put here to use storytelling as a tool to make us aware of our better selves. That my art is my activism in action, but not for some political cause, but in the struggle to hold fast to our humanity and our compassion.
2. Being an artist is being a teacher. That art is the way I do what I do best: Teach. And every since I was a little girl, learning new ideas and living up to the gifts god gave me was always what I knew I was supposed to do. My greatest influences were my teachers, so it makes sense that that was what I would be drawn to and what I would be good at it.

I'd like to begin a conversation, an exchange with you about how we get to that place of "why am I here and what do I do about it once I answer that question."

I'd like to turn off the sarcasm and the negativity and intentionally create a place in which our hearts are talking to each other and not our fears.

I realize that that is how you turn off the fearful, ugly messages that are surrounding us. By filling the space with a much more intentional way of living that is in line with our heart's truest desires which are fundamentally good.

I'd like to hear about what you're struggling with, what you've learned you love and how you're going to turn off the outside dark noise, and turn up the volume of your heart's wishes, hopes and dreams.

Because the darker the world gets, the brighter your heart light starts to shine.

I want us to figure out a way to get that light out of your heart and into the world because I'm hungry for some light.

Aren't you?

Click HERE and have a listen and tell me what you think?

What are you struggling with?

How can you and I help each other to find some light?

Cause Mama's tired and oh, so ready for some new ideas, some new light, some new ways back to the love that brought us here.

Let's banish sadness.

Let's banish only doing things for fame or money.

And replace that with doing things that make us feel good, joyful and purpose-filled.

Let's figure some of that shit out together.

I'm beyond ready.

I'm listening....

Love, Light & Power,

April

DreamingOutLoud

P.S. Below, I've shared with you this amazing article that helped me put into words this "lostness" that I've been experiencing. This need for some light.

And how I learned that I'm not lost at all, I'm on the verge of discovering my highest joy, my biggest life high ever...

I hope it brings you as much peace and hopefulness as it did me...

Ache' y Luz...

negativity,
anticipating things not working out is easy...

vulnerability &
being open to possibility
is the really
hard
stuff