There is a great story about Jim Carey (actually there are lots of them) but I was thinking about this one as I sat in the sunshine drinking my coffee. Jim Carey had a burning passion to break into show biz. He wanted to be famous. He wanted to earn 10 million dollars (that’s another good story). He used to think about these things a lot.
He knew what HE wanted but one night as he lay on his bed he asked himself “what does my audience want?” (He was a regular at a comedy club back then). The answer that came to him was that his people wanted to be “free from concern”. His next task was to figure out how to deliver that freedom to them.
His conclusion was that if he demonstrated that he was free from concern then his audience would feel it. His brilliant move came when he walked out on stage and asked the audience how they were doing. He didn’t stop for a breath but replied “all righty then”, signalling that he actually couldn’t care less. He was free from the concern he’d expressed. The audience roared and the goofy character from the movie Ace Ventura Pet Detective was born (which actually delivered him the 10 million dollars he had dreamed of, another good story).
Now why am I telling you this? Not so you’ll make insensitive remarks to your family or friends that signal you couldn’t care less about them.
But I’ve been thinking about how much concern we all harbour these days.
Collectively we are concerned about the state of the world, about war, about the economy and our finances, our health, about our kids if we have them. Individually we want people to like us, we want them to agree with us, we want them to understand us, we want them to do what we think is best. The list could go on but then I might end up contributing a new concern to your list.
As an artist the things that concern me are: Is my art any good? Is it of any value to anyone? Is it conveying what I want it to convey? Is this particular painting any good? What’s the best way to offer my art to the world? Have I made enough effort to market my work?
Wouldn’t it feel good, as Jim Carey intuited, to be free from concern? Is it possible? Or is it just part of the package of being human? It’s an interesting question to ponder.
And what is concern anyway? I’m thinking about it in the way that we worry and chew on things with our mind, often wondering how can we solve this, what can we do about that. And in many cases there’s not much we can actively do. We can’t single handedly stop the wars or control other people’s behaviour or thoughts.
You have probably heard it said that “worry is praying for what you don’t want.” The logic of this idea rests on the fact that our thoughts are powerful. What we give our focus and attention to is a kind of energy. It’s like the magnifying glass that burns a hole in a piece of paper when the sun shines through it.
But often our minds wrestle with our concerns in the misplaced belief that we can solve problems that way. But if you’re like me you’ve probably noticed your best ideas come to you when you’re not thinking about them. In the shower, on a walk. Not while you are wearing yourself out chewing on them.
But wouldn’t it be nice to be released into a peaceful state of acceptance of what is?
What if we decided to give our minds and hearts a little rest? What if we stopped using our precious energy against ourselves and used it to become free from concern? What if every time a worry popped into our head we pulled a little Ace Ventura, got our goofy face on and offered it a little “all righty then”.
