Stand Up And Live

(ATLANTA, MAY2010) There is only one experience called your life. And what you don't do, doesn't get done. It's not that someone else will do it. In fact, they can't. Because you happen to be unique.

Everyone is unique, too. But we're talking about this one experience for you, called, "your life".

It's easy to slip silently into accepting the list of setbacks and failures in life as normal and also as insurmountable. We complicate things by managing to somehow conveniently overlook our successes and happy moments most of the time, making things seem even less bright. And the results of that equation are constantly brushing up against a small voice within us that provides inner-affirming ideas that ring true for us, such as having the nerve to try new things like acting or standup comedy or public speaking.

"Oh, I know I can't do that," the mis-trained ego says, "What if I fail? There was this time..."

But if we listen closely enough, there's almost always someone or some thing telling us not to believe that message. It tells us that there's something bigger: that this is YOUR life. Sometimes they come right out and say it: "Don't take your song to the grave with you. Sing it while you're here!"

Examples abound, of individuals, men and women, who decide one day that "this is my life!"

There was this bright young sports writer in Hoboken, New Jersey with a promising future in the newspaper business ahead for him. After an altercation with the editor over who was going to fill the vacant sports editor position, he walked out and into his new career. His name was Frank Sinatra.

And a sharp young stock broker was married to the daughter of a principal in a prestigious firm. There seemed only one way: UP! Except he just could not see it. He heard music, and he followed it, playing with a young rising star named Bette Midler. So, Barry Manilow changed his life.

And Sam Clemens! My, my, what a case, bouncing from career to career, city to city, all across the U.S. Sometimes he was mobile to improve, sometimes just to stay alive. But, eventually he evolved into Mark Twain the American icon.

On a given day, millions of "normal" people get up and go about their day in automatic mode. They know there's something more- at least they have an uneasy, unspeakable feeling of it. Occasionally, they actually entertain the thought of this higher version of themselves, even if just for a moment.

A teenage comic named "Jack Roy" labored for nine years at the comedy trade and finally quit and went home. But he just couldn't stay gone. He got back into the game in 1962, got a gig at a club and decided he needed a new name. The club owner remembered a character from a TV episode from the 50s and suggested it to Jack: "How about Rodney Dangerfield?"

Many people stay in the state of being only vaguely aware of a higher calling. And then one day they wake up - and they're dead.

Rodney Dangerfield - successes, failures, dreams, disasters... all of it - made his transition in 2004. Along the way he sang and laughed and cried and wondered and worried and failed and succeeded more than we'll know. While we were all laughing at him, he was choosing and living - living his life his way.

Each of us comes upon the day when we make our decision. It might see a mighty flare-up at our job that leads to a spark-filled trip to the parking lot. Or it might be a calm and accepting letter of resignation knowing it's that time. Or maybe we find our peace right where we are in the moment, and in the next, and the next.

We tend to equate celebrity and public image with some kind of blissful success that resembles an entitlement only available to those celebrity few. But, to a person, those individuals whom we anoint as 'successful' will relate a familiar and sometimes harrowing journey through the jungle of their own doubt. That's at least partly why we shouldn't be so judgmental when they implode so spectacularly: they are only too human, after all.

Along any path are moments of illumination and darkness, and all of it a kind of eternal reminder of who we are and what we're actually here for. And the moment won't be forever denied. If our placid response is a vernier, life will out - and things will find some other way to bubble to the surface. It's unavoidable.

"I'm losing," said Frank Sinatra, as doctors and nurses worked to keep his 82-year old body functioning a while longer. And this from Mister "I Did It My Way".

You have this one experience called your life. Why not stand up and live it as fully as you can, and slide across home plate grinning ear-to-ear, and saying confidently, "I won!"

Footnote: And then there was Ben Kubelski. A personal friend of President Harry Truman, Ben (also known an Jack Benny) arrived to serve as Master of Ceremonies for Truman's Inaugural Ball in 1949. A guard stopped him, motioned to his violin case and said, "Mr. Benny, what do you have in there?" Jack Benny whispered back, "It's a Thompson sub-machine gun." The guard said,"Oh, that's a relief. I was afraid it was your violin"

By: Phil Marnell

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Phil Marnell is a entrepreneur, consultant and jazz trumpeter living in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S.). He has more than 30 years experience in a range of technology fields, and writes and consults in technology use and impact on people and organizations. His website, www.excelicommerce.com sells products and also reviews products for sale.