Impossible to Possible – with ease and grace
“Even the seemingly impossible is entirely possible when you are completely released on it” Lester Levenson
Caryn Johnson always knew she wanted to be an actor. In fact, she says her first coherent thought as a young child was, Man I would love to act.
Even though she grew up n the New York projects,- theater and what she called “pretending to be somebody else” was a big part of her life. Her single mother was trying to raise two kids on a low paying job and the only theater she was exposed to was the free kind in Shakespeare in the park.
One day she saw Carole Channing in a movie, coming down the stairs in some frothy satin gown and Caryn thought…I can do that- I could live that life. In the movies you could be anything. You could fly, you could meet alien life-forms, you could be a queen.
Her life took a detour in high school when her dyslexia caused her to be labeled “slow, possibly retarded.” She dropped out of school, became a junkie and forgot all about her acting dream. By 19 she was a single mom herself. She was able to kick the drugs- but was still a high school drop out with no skills. She took a job as a nanny and began to work her way west.- She finally started laying bricks and going to cosmetology school and at night for fun, played around with a theater troupe. She did makeup and hair at a funeral home supplementing her welfare check worrying about shoes for her kid and how to make $165 worth of groceries last a month.
Through it all though she kept saying “Anything is possible”- and somehow knowing acting was something she could do and do well. Her unwavering belief finally unlocked a door. In 1983, famed director Mike Nichols happened to catch her performance in an experimental troupe in Berkeley. He was so blown away by the characters she played that he signed her immediately for a one woman show on Broadway.
Stephen Spielberg caught that show and cast her as Celie in The Color Purple -and Whoopi Goldberg was born. “I knew I could never turn water into wine, or make cats speak French- But I also learned that if you come to a thing with no preconceived notions of what you cannot do- the whole world can be your canvas. Just dream it and make it so. (from her autobiography Book.)
Another favorite teacher of mine- says “Set it and forget it”….know the thing you want to do – dream and visualize yourself doing it and let go of the how or the when….Just watch the universe deliver in spectacular ways.
I used to think stories like the above pertained to special people who must know something I don’t – now I realize that its something we all have – the innate ability to use our thoughts, our dreams and our capacity for resiliency to take us to places that lift our hearts and the hearts of others.
This week consider anything you think is impossible that you also know on some level, you can do. Put aside all circumstances and focus on your faith – if something hasn’t happened, it’s not because it can’t happen or won’t happen-it just hasn’t happened yet.
BE the dream –
