Bits and Pieces

laughter and acting

laughter is such an encouraging thing. happiness in a sound, filling your chest and brightening your eyes. it's your friends over coffee, your family at christmas.

yet i have known laughter that has broken me down. laughter that has told me that i cannot be something, that it's simply laughable to believe i could do something like that.

my whole childhood, god, my whole life up until now, i have been known as the smart kid. once i was put into this category, there was no way i could be anything else. namely, sporty. the laughter as soon as i put effort into anything vaguely athletic taught me it was better never to try, and so i became the smart kid, the one who read books and wrote stories and drew but god help her if she wanted to sprint or throw a javelin.

my brother, my twin, the other half of my soul. as the only two children our parents ever had, of course we were designated roles. i was the smart one, and he was the sporty one. he simply couldn't be academic, surely that wasn't possible. for years, we were told to our faces that i must have been the smart one while he was the sporty one. i always defended him, yet he believed it. now he doubts his intelligence, despite the fact we have competed at school all our lives. he is in love with the outdoors, and yes, he is sporty. but why can't he be both?

why must we be assigned a role to fit into, then laughed at as soon as we try to expand on it? can one actor play only one role, as opposed to many? why must people force others into believing they cannot be something purely because society seems to think we can only be one thing?

so now i tell you.

you are the actor in this world you call life. you have seen actors playing so many different roles you can hardly keep track. why are you any different? what is stopping you from taking up a second role? a third? maybe even four?

society should not limit you. my parents raised my brother and i to believe we could be anything we wanted. we were never judged for wanting to give something a go, even if we were truly terrible at it. yes, the rest of the world made us believe we were trapped in the roles they had given us, but no longer.

break the rules. take that second role. don't let laughter stop you. use it as fuel, let the laughter turn to astonishment as they realise that you are truly amazing.

conforming is in the past.

let's break out and become the multi-talented people we were all born to be.