I've been doing a role as Joy. Her name is Ilona and she represents the childlike happiness, joy and live in the moment spirit everyone has. In the play, different types of personalities are represented as people and how they interact with each other. Joy is the most ignored and everything else tries to push her aside. There is a point to me sharing this. I was once talking with a friend of mine about the role and he noted that my acting in it was natural. It's very easy to overdo it or make it a caricature. This brings to what I've been thinking lately. I'm very upbeat and happy person. I don't get blue easily, that takes a lot of stress! I haven't always been this way. I used to get really upset over mistakes I've made and situations that went horribly for me. I don't know how or when it changed. Nowadays, if I make a mistake, I laugh about it. Like today, I had some lines go really horribly wrong, but I just went backstage and started to laugh about it. There isn't really anything else I can do. I can't change what happened, I could let it bother me, but I choose to learn my lesson and move on. It took me a long time to get here, but I'm glad I've gone through the journey. I choose to believe I'm human and with that I make mistakes. It's unavoidable, but my job is to control how they effect me. I can just do my best, work hard and learn.
I take joy out of small pleasures. I live in the moment, so it's easy to stop and smell the roses. Or in my case, smell the lilacs. I always stop to smell them. I love eating. I love cooking food that's good and surprisingly healthy. I love exercising as well, dancing to music. I fill my days with these. I admit that being happy person, it's easy to find stuff to be happy about. And I never tell anyone how to live their life. I will never tell depressed person to smell the roses. In my experience, they do, but it doesn't give the same pleasure as it does for me. Their brain chemistry works differently, so things that work for me doesn't work for them. But I do want to remind people to be more in the moment. Often things that create most stress are in the future. Part of the problem is waiting until you can do something about it. Only thing that helps is to stop and look around. What kind of weather is it? What does outside look like? Is there anything beautiful out there? What about inviting a friend over for a coffee? The moment is often good. People just forget to stop for a second.
