winning, losing, and practice
Every now and then I get this flinch of physical strength and a cautious excitement, followed by a new, visceral pain in restraining it. I HATE that restraint. Restraint feels unnatural to me. Despite the best efforts of my parents and doctors, I never learned that. Instead I listened to the rest of the world, which shouted and whispered at me that restraint is personal failure, that saying “I can’t do this” is giving up, that giving up is for losers, and that being a loser is the worst thing you can be.
In typing “loser” I was just reminded of a teaching that had rattled around in my brain all summer a few years ago, then gone dormant until now: improv loves the loser. Being a loser in improv is the best thing you can be. Losing means that you had a desire, a strong one that you rushed toward, that you came into contact with forces outside your control, that you were pushed into vulnerability which then unfolded the scene into a more interesting, relatable, authentic place. Everyone relates to the loser. In class that summer, it often happened that two players would be stuck in a back-and-fourth battle and the scene would get stale, exhausting to watch. “Someone has to lose,” my teacher would say, “Don’t be afraid to lose.” Losing makes your character human. It melts us.
“You win some you lose some,” Paige, a traveler I met, would say this in the silliest and sincerest moments: after muddling her spanish and ordering tacos for ten people instead of two, after venting frustrations, after musing on regrets.
On the topic of regrets and restraint, a silly minor example: I decided not to go to San Francisco’s free bluegrass festival this weekend, which I had been looking forward to since deciding not to go on the Watson this year. Pitzer College practically evacuates for this weekend every year, and while I was in school I always opted to stay and get work done, telling myself I’d go as soon as I graduated. I can recognize that missing out this weekend is not that big a deal, that I’m still having a nice weekend and a great life and that I’m a very lucky lady. I also, though, can recognize that it’s tugging at me uncomfortably: a few months ago I would’ve walked right in to the (largely inaccessible) park, sat on the ground all day, waited in lines, stood around, danced my heart out and taken some painkillers at the end of the day. I wouldn’t have let any injury “get in the way of my life;” I wouldn’t have lost any experience to my body and its needs.
All weekend I’ve been stuck battling myself back and fourth – will I regret not going, missing the chance to see my friends who are visiting, will this avalanche into bigger patterns of missing out on irreplaceable experiences, will I stop getting invited, will I regret these moments of restraint, will they change me in some fundamental way? Or will I go and be so anxious that I still miss out in a different way, will I risk complicating my healing process and hurting myself again, will this avalanche into bigger patterns wherein my fear of missing out – my fear of losing – causes me to miss more in the long run?
Recovery is messy, full of winning and losing and mostly the anxious in-betweens. I finally got a disability placard for my car again, after being too ashamed to use one for the past decade or more. The second time I used it, I got a mean note on my windshield because when I walk, people don’t recognize me as disabled. You win some you lose some, you win some you lose some, you lose some.
I sometimes tell myself that in opting out of things like Hardly Strictly, in using my placard despite the social discomfort, in staying home and diligently doing my exercises and icing my leg and going to bed early, in practicing restraint, I am choosing a losing now in exchange for a winning later. As though my life is some silly video-game and I’m stowing away points to cash in next year: a whole YEAR of winning and improv and living without the constant calculations of my injury in exchange for making the hard choices and thinking the hard thoughts now.
That’s so not how it works.
Despite any amount of restraint I choose now, I can’t predict what will happen next year except that I will, inevitably and certainly, win some and lose some.
I will still have to make the hard choices and think the hard thoughts, I will still have to navigate the tricky balance of restraint and release, only with much more uncertainty and discomfort, and much higher stakes, than I have to deal with now. This whole business of disability and self and experience is not something I can “win” at, this is not something that ends.
Similarly, in the reading I’ve done about improv, I’ve learned that this whole business of improv is not something I can ever be “good” at, it is not something I can “win.” It is not something that ends. It’s a continual process, a practice. While any practice can be tedious and frustrating, it can also be really freaking GOOD. The whole first year and a half I did improv in college we hardly thought about performing, all we did was practice, and I learned mountains. I felt whole and engaged and connected to the people around me, I won and lost and mostly had the messy in-betweens and it felt really really really REAL AND GOOD.
Things I am practicing these days: restraint, release, drawing, teaching improv (!), interacting with humans, planting seeds and actually watering them, tutoring people, writing things down, face painting, making good food and HOT CHOCOLATE, being vulnerable, drinking water, articulating.
