Where You Fit In

Taika Waititi with Thor: Ragnarok screening in the backgroundA few weeks ago, Taika Waititi, director and actor and hilarious human, hosted a live "watch party" of his movie “Thor: Ragnarok”, and he brought on special guests Tessa Thompson and Mark Ruffalo. (Not-surprising spoiler alert: there was very little actual watching of the movie.)

At some point, Taika and Mark were riffing on homeschooling and how it wasn’t really working that well for them. Taika joked that he wanted to teach his kids skills that would be useful in the next few years: "how to chop wood, build a bivouac, build a fire without a fire log from Ralphs, hunt with hand-made tools."

Taika: "I tell you what’s not going to be helpful, when all that goes down, is knowing the Meisner method."

Mark: "Nope. Stella Adler is not gonna help you. Actors Studio? Nope."

Taika: "Being able to play a guitar is not gonna feed your tribe, so we need to up-skill these kids."

I cackled so loudly I woke up one of my sleeping children, a cathartic laugh that had been trapped in my chest for 18 ½ years.

I celebrated my 23rd birthday in Brooklyn, NY, seven days before September 11, 2001. I was six months out of my BFA program at NYU (though I spent time with the Stella Adler crew, I was Playwrights Horizons and Tech Track), working admin at a Yiddish theater by day and creating a theater company with my three best friends by night. We were going to produce new works, including our own, and tell the stories we found most important. We had big dreams in the big City, and we were ready to get to work.

On that Tuesday morning, orange smoke staining the sky, I was shattered, valueless, useless. Obsolete. I thought warriors were called for, I thought strength and might and fight were needed, and I didn’t know how to do any of those things.

I will never forget that sinking grief on September 11, 12, 13 – it was crystal clear to me that what I’d just dedicated eight years of my life to had been rendered instantly useless by the violence of that day, and the twisted rhetoric that followed. While I was lucky to be physically safe, my inner vision of my place in the world vanished, drained away, leaving me bereft.

That space within me stayed barren and broken for much longer than I realized.

Now, I am 41 years old in the midst of a global pandemic. The huge difference is that this time, I trust in my bones that what I know how to do, what I’ve trained for in and out of school, is intrinsic to my survival, to my value in my community.

Maybe some of this was inevitable growth with age and matured self-confidence, but now, I see how sacred and vital my skills are. An acquaintance's words recently helped me crystallize these thoughts when she suggested that we each make a list of skills or experiences that have prepared us for this kind of challenge. (Thank you, Syreeta!)

I'd come to the same realization, and I love the idea of explicitly naming these assets that each of us has. It turns out that what I've thought of as "hard moments" in my life were actually major crises that I survived and learned from, and that those skills can now keep me, my family, and my community afloat in helpful ways:

Love, patience, care, careful attention, taking notes, weaving narrative, cultivating, growing, ease in discomfort, comfort with chaos, agility with my rage as fuel, evolving, singing, dancing – all of these matter.

I have visceral, blessed experience now – weaving a community, thriving or surviving extreme uncertainty, communicating during frightening or difficult moments, sharing a vision, faith, and trust in myself and my family and neighbors.

Photo of "Language of the Birds" by Brian Goggin and Dorka Keehn
My cells now know and believe the truth of life on this planet: we matter to each other, we are matter on this planet with each other, we are intricately woven together. As the saying from the Aboriginal activists group in 1970s Queensland goes, my liberation is bound up with yours. It is bound up with the liberation of this earth, with the sovereignty of the people who capitalism deems worthless, with the liberation of life forms that colonial mindset calls disposable or exploitable resources to be used by the select few at the cost of the rest of us.

As a kid, the adults around me often said, "It takes all kinds..." when they were annoyed by something rude another person had done, something they would never do. When I grew up, I heard the rest of the phrase: "It takes all kinds to make a world." Warriors, yes, but also writers and artists and healers and caregivers and dreamers.

Maybe it’s the difference in the kind of crisis, emergency – but this time, I feel powerful, capable, and needed. I know where I fit. Not that I don’t need to be mindful, staying alert to how I can serve humbly, supporting others and learning more. But I have full faith that everything I’ve learned up to this moment matters -- including (maybe especially) those eight years spent creating theater with others in my teens and early 20s.

Taika and Mark were just doing a funny riff -- let's be real, neither of those two are about to switch careers – but their self-effacing cynicism shone light on that young, scared, devastated woman I was in 2001.

Maybe you've wondered if your skills from Before the Pandemic are worth anything now. Your true skills, ones honed by following your love and excitement and passion. You may not know where they fit, but I promise you; someone somewhere requires them for something that matters.

Hold fast.

And listen, knowing how to build a bivouac can't hurt either.