The Lesson of Knowing When to Actively Observe amidst Acting: A Sub-Lesson of "The Best Commitments Never Bind and Allow Advantageous Flexibility"

The Lesson of Knowing When to Actively Observe amidst Acting: A Sub-Lesson of "The Best Commitments Never Bind and Allow Advantageous Flexibility"


One thing I realized I NEVER do in life is watch the movie of life. I'm OBSESSED With acting in it; engaging, moving, being active in life. All very good things. After all many a great wise man can espouse the value of being active and interacting with life instead of being a passive observer. However, what I recently realized is that constact acting, nonstop Yang, all the time is out of balance. While activity engagement, and initiative and just "doing stuff" is fantastic and a valuable energetic quality (and no doubt a necessity for success), knowing when to remain just as alert and focused as you are in acting mode, but to sit back and observe on select occasions is of equal importance.. I was at this club in Hollywood earlier this weekend. It was a massive dance club with multiple bars, hundreds of square feet of space. Massive ceilings in a former theatre hall and a huge stage and dance floors cluttered with hundreds and hundreds of dancing partying people. Amongst all that there were a few people there that, amidst all this blaring techno music, gleaming lights, hundreds of people moving and dancing, they weren't moving an extra muscle even trying to dance. Now this wasn't laziness. These people were alert. Sure, there were people that were half-asleep slouched in a chair sitting or spacing out. But these 2 people I saw were always in the middle of this huge dance floor, smack dab in the center of all these dancing partying people, and they were alert and observant and not lazy. It wasn't as if they didn't make an effort to dance; it was as though the thought didn't even consider to them or it wasn't in their interest. They weren't acting haughty or "above" the party or group; none of that. I couldn't figure out what was going on, but later I realized they were "watching the movie" of the club. Watching the movie of that small slice of life. Most interestingly to me was that they appeared to fully have validated their simply standing there fully observing.

Those two people had validated their active observation -- the choice to merely watch amongst crowds that were moving and dancing. The funny thing is what made me realize that. When I entered the club the cover fee was at a booth at which you normally by movie tickets! Wow! haha. I think we've got to ensure that we realize that any commitment mustn't be a "bind". The taoist beliefs emphasize the necessity of the balance between activity and stillness. You grow the best out of utilizing both those. Our very essential bio-rhythms function at such pattern - wakefulness (active engagement) and then sleep (stillness). Committing to being active shouldn't bind you from ocassionally observing, when observing actively could be more valuable at a certain time. Committing to eat certain types of food, mustn't "bind you" to occasionally eating some different type of food that at the time could be more valuable. So in a way the lesson of "allowing yourself to actively observe in the instances where observing would be the most valuable thing to do -- more valuable than acting", is a sub-lesson of the grander idea of remembering to maintain flexibility in your commitments and knowing that the best commitments are those that never bind or lock you into something but enable the flexibility to do something slightly different if that adjustment has more present value. The best commitments allow advantageous flexibility. You have to give yourself permission to do the most valuable thing at a given time within the construct of a commitment -- that's advantageous flexibility. It doesn't mean abandoning your original commitment or goal; just allowing it to expand through a different medium on select occassions.

Knowing When to Actively Observe or Actively Engage.
See, I had felt guilty out of simply actively observing around people. But actively observing doesn't violate that commitment to stay active. So I'm going to focus on being active and constantly doing things but give myself the permission to engage "active observation" when that's best at a certain time or place. How do you identify in which places or events are best to actively engage or actively observe? Excellent question. The best way to know is to ask yourself "is this place or event set up so that I could be the apex center performer? Or is there ropes, boundaries, an inaccessible stage or some kind of hierarchy? If there's a stage you can't get up on and a main event that other people have paid to see then such a situation is best to actively observe because actively engaging will eventually cause problems in such a scenario. If there's already a main event and you excel through exceptionally talented active engagement at that event eventually you'll hit a the ceiling where you aren't permitted to go on stage or use the mic or lead the seminar or whatever the main event is. In this situations simply accept that the maximal utilization of such a scenario is to actively observe. Feel guilty about actively engaging in such a situation because trust me from many many experiences of getting kicked out of places, running into security, hitting that ceiling where someone else is the center, the star because actively engaging is the best use of your time. Then where there's more of an open field in a different scenario you can actively engage.