Speaking of Motivation

What motivates you?

There’s the old joke about the actor who constantly asks, “What’s my motivation?” It’s part of the actor’s job to figure that out, not to be spoon-fed the answers by the director. In one instance, when an actor was told to cross from one side of the stage to the other, he questioned the director with, “But how do I get there?” The frustrated director replied, “Put one foot in front of the other.”

Motivation in life can be more difficult. Like an actor seeking ways to navigate a character’s arc in a play, we need to figure out what we want and how we get there. For some, figuring out the want (the objective in the theatre world) is the hard part. What is the goal?

On a personal level, I’m currently dealing with someone who appears to have no motivation, or it’s misguided. His wife PFA’ed him and had him evicted from their house. As a result, his more-or-less comfortable life (made acceptable through complacency) shattered. He suddenly found himself ungrounded.

At this point his motivation should be to pick himself up, move forward, and repeat the mantra, “This is the first day of the rest of my life.” Unfortunately, like one of those bad TV episodes where the characters keep going back in time to relive (but hopefully repair) the situation, he keeps returning to past events. All of those memories—and ruminations—are self-flagellations, and the resulting pain takes him backward, not forward. And the pain is shared because it’s a difficult thing to watch.

My motivations have always been toward excellence: learn more, experience more, pass on that knowledge for the betterment of others and society. That has served as my guiding light throughout my education and career. It’s so difficult to watch someone who wants to keep stepping into and falling down a rabbit hole that takes him back to the past, like Groundhog Day (to mix my metaphors).