The Stand In

"Depression is your brain telling you "Fuck You," I don't want to play this character I'm playing anymore." Jim Carrey

Who's ready for awards season? 

I don't know when awards season starts, nor do I care, but for most Americans suffering from depression and addiction, I'm of the opinion that everyone should get a trophy every day of the year for best actor or best actress in a comedy, drama, or both. 

For so many of us, the roles we play in our everyday lives do not match what is happening below the surface. 

These outward expressions are as fake as a Gucci bag from a guy on the street in New York.

"Sure, that's a dynamite-looking bag, Mr. Vendor, at the rusty fold-out table, and I have no doubt that Gucci decides to push all of its unsold inventory through you here on this street corner grate with smoke billowing out from the city's bowels."

There are many root causes of the addiction and mental health crises in this country, but this one — this idea that we are rarely, if ever, the person we claim to be — is undoubtedly one of the logs keeping the fire going.

From childhood, we are pigeonholed and placed into boxes based on scores and metrics that help drive us to our chosen careers, which end up fruitless and lacking in meaning. We still deliver education as if the result was to make every kid in the country an accountant or a scientist so that we can keep our institutions spinning 24 hours a day. 

I'm sounding the alarm.

The passionless plight of the modern-day Homosapien has reached its apex. 

We have summited Everest, and at the top is a life filled with a steaming hot cup of average and uninteresting. 

And as it turns out, when you're unhappy for the vast majority of the day, you might feel pretty shitty about yourself at the end of that day.

And if you feel pretty shitty about yourself, what do we generally do to make ourselves feel better?

Drink, smoke, uppers, downers, sugar, fat, couches, and Candy Crush. 

Anything but the real problem. 

More masking. 

More hiding. 

More costumes. 

As we fake our way through life, we become completely disillusioned with what we see around us and increasingly frustrated that we can't catch up to others who seem to be doing it perfectly. 

So we act. 

We get in character.

The motions are so ingrained now that we can sleepwalk through the entire day. 

Work, meetings, emails, gym, happy hour, television, sleep, repeat.

Every … single … day. 

We put on a brave face and power through the despair and sadness, pushing ourselves long past our breaking point.

But that character, the person standing in for us every day on set, cannot last forever. 

Cracks start to show on the surface because chasms are opening up beneath. 

It's an earthquake. 

And finally, one day, the Earth swallows us whole. 

Look around your office. 

Look around the grocery store.

So many of us are quietly screaming, yelling behind the glass of a soundproof booth, no one able or willing to hear our cries for help. 

So the stand-in finishes out another day, and they race to their soft blankets of booze and pillows of pills.

Meanwhile, the actual actor is sitting somewhere in their trailer, surrounded by the walls like a prison, wishing the world looked different. 

Here is the truth:

You are not doing the world any good by being less than what you could be. 

You are not doing yourself, your family, or your friends any good by being less than what you could be.

No one will thank you for it.

Thanks for your averageness.

Thanks for living below your capabilities. 

Who would say that?!

If you were the most authentic version of yourself today for the entire day, without pretense or bullshit, without simply reciting your lines or going through the same old routine, what would it look like?

More importantly, what would it feel like?

What would the people around you think of that person versus the person that they see every day?

First, and most assuredly, you would catch them off guard. 

You've likely been so miserable for so long that they'd probably think you were high. 

When you wake up tomorrow, look yourself in the mirror and promise the world that it will see the authentic you today, the real actor, the protagonist, the hero, and not the stand-in sitting quietly by as life races past. 

Be the person so immersed in your performance that people leap from their seats to show their support for your brilliance. 

Don't settle for the siren song of mediocrity.

Don't settle for being a stand-in in your own life.

EO- Live a Life Worth Watching