Chapter 1. Voice
Your voice is who you are. Maybe not the âyouâ you carry around every day, but the one yelling from inside, demanding to be heard. Your voice is the way you see the world and how you translate it back. When you train your voice and allow it to grow and be heard, that beautiful sound will carve a path for you to follow for life. Conversely, if you fail to use your voice, others will be in charge of it. And you. Never give in, never surrender. Your voice is your most powerful tool.
01. Your parents were wrong
Parents are amateurs. I mean no slight to parents or to amateurs; I am both. But, growing up, we are given only a few options as to our future path. Either weâre told that we can be anything we want, even president. Or that we are to follow a predestined, familial path with a title like MD, PhD, Dr., or Esq. These ideas arenât necessarily wrong, but they are misleading. Your purpose on this planet isnât to become a millionaire, build a 401K, or even get a good jobâyour purpose is to figure out who or what you are. If you can do that, everything else is frosting. The great oracle herself, Dolly Parton, tells us, âFind out who you are and do it on purpose.â
Classically this is called âknowing thyself.â Admittedly not an easy task. Many of us are presented with a track to follow that may not be our choice. Just because you were born on a farm doesnât mean you were born to be a farmer. In my hometown, two fields were popular (meaning you could possibly make a living at them): nurse or prison guard. I felt no attraction to either. My calling was for the arts, but I disregarded it because I was told it was something âtalentedâ people did, and I didnât want to grow up to be a âstarving artist.â But the creative urge proved too strongâand painfully obviousâso I chose to ignore the critics, and to fight and sometimes fail in order to see my vision through. I still do.
You canât ignore your DNA. The worst thing you can do is deny who you are, try to be someone or something youâre not, and live a life bent and molded by others. As Oscar Wilde put it, âMost people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elseâs opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.â Ouch.
You can be a musician, an accountant, or a sexy, powerful, creative beastâbut you have to be yourself first. You have to follow that star. Others without the grit and guts will have to be satisfied with becoming president.
02. Have a damn opinion
Thereâs an American gospel song with the powerful refrain, âThis little light of mine, Iâm gonna let it shine.â We all have that little light. Itâs lit by our upbringing and our childhood. Itâs our history, our travels, the things we love, and the things we fear. Our little light is our opinionâand it begs to be illuminated.
Sadly, most of us donât let our light shine, for two reasons: Itâs too easy and itâs too hard.
Itâs too easy because itâs âlittle.â Itâs familiar to us. We pooh-pooh our own opinion and donât see the value of what we have to offer. After all, âWhoâd be interested in me or what I have to say or my voice?â Itâs too hard because once we acknowledge it, we have to trust it and share it with the world, and we live in fear that someone may not like it. This is a completely valid fear, because the truth is, not everyone will love your voice. But this division is how you define your audience, how you find the ones who will love you for who you are. If you play it safe and choke back your real voice, you are like a rudderless ship, taking directions from the waves.
Your voice is the story you put into everything you do. Itâs what sets you apart and makes you and your work memorable. It frees you from following trends or begging for ideas, asking, âWhat do they want?â Now your most powerful tool is asking yourself, âWhat do I have to say?â
03. The things that made you weird as a kid make you great today
When I was a kid, I was full of wordplay and jokes. I loved to sing loudly and poorly. My best talent was entertaining my fifth-grade friends by drawing naked ladies. They looked more like lumpy potatoes, but my audience didnât care. Unfortunately, my level of energy and enthusiasm lacked appreciation at home or at school. I was called âcreativeââand it was not a compliment.
As kids, weâre all weird. We have our interests and activities, and we like to run them full throttle. As we get older, we realize thereâs a price to standing out, so we shrink from our weirdness in fear of anyone finding out who we really are. Being weird or differentâeven creativeâshould be not a source of shame or embarrassment but a torch to be held high. Weird is about the courage to be who you were born to be. Nerdy, goofy, fidgety; these are strengths. These are gifts! The things that made you weird as a kid are the source of your character and creative powers. These are the base elements of who you are. Not perfect. Not trying. Just yourself. If you hide them, you risk never knowing what youâre capable of.
Professionally, weird is a benefit. For some fields, itâs a damn prerequisite. Any âsuccessfulâ actor, chef, musician, athlete, or comedian, when asked what contributed to their success, will answer, âWhen I was a kid . . .â Pop-culture icon and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson remembers looking up into the night sky as a child and says, âThe universe called me.â
When you accept your weirdness and believe in your gifts is when things get really weird. Thatâs when your cause inspires others. When people see their own struggle reflected in yours, you create the potential for shared humanity. Your weirdness speaks to them. Thatâs when you find those people who accept you precisely because youâre weird and different. Ultimately youâll hear that glorious refrain: âOh, youâre weird, too? I thought I was the only one!â This is how you form relationships and businesses. This is how you find your audience.
Accept it: Youâre weird.
04. In the particular lies the universal
I teach the visual arts, but I push my students to understand that what their work looks like is less important than what it says. I want them to express an opinion in their work, to divulge something personal. Their plaintive cry is usually, âIf itâs personal to me, how could anyone else understand it?â My answer is, âWhat interests you, interests others.â What is most particular to us, even though it may seem personal in its details, can have universal meaning and value to others.
George Lucas grew up in a small, conservative California town but yearned to be a filmmaker and loved racing cars. These three themesâ(1) a young man in a repressive society, (2) escape to a better world, and (3) racing hot-rod carsâall form the story line of Lucasâs first three major films.
THX 1138 (1971) takes place in a dystopian future where the young hero, THX, yearns to escape the confines of his state-run society and does so in a stolen Lola T70 race car.
American Graffiti (1973) takes place in our not-too-distant past in a small California town. Itâs the story of two young men on the verge of leaving home for college and a more exciting life. One of the filmâs âcharactersâ is a yellow 1932 Ford coupe with the license plate âTHX 138.â And the actor Harrison Ford plays a charming rogue driving a black hot rod 1955 Chevy.
Stars Wars: A New Hope (1977) takes place âa long time ago in a galaxy far, far awayâ and features young Luke Skywalker, who yearns to escape his small farm and seek adventure. He eventually teams up with a charming rogue played by Harrison Ford, who pilots what is essentially a hot rod called the Millennium Falcon. The references to THX abound throughout the Star Wars saga, as names of droids and labels on ships. Even the ubiquitous movie theater sound system Lucas helped develop in 1983 is called THX. Lucas didnât have to look far or invent themes to write about. He never went searching for stories to tell or vehicles to carry them; he just had to look inside and tell his own story. The themes and details he drew on were already very particular to him, but now they have meaning for us.
A less Hollywood application...