Did you ever wake up with an elephant on your chest? I did this morning. It’s big and grey, weights a ton and I can’t breathe, I also can’t get up and out of bed because I’ve got this elephant on me. Nor can I say in bed because it’s not comfortable to do so, because i’ve got this elephant on me. My state-of-the-art-morning-rescue-kit, my Keurig machine, is miles and miles from me, separated by days of desert, and there is this elephant on my chest. I don’t know how it got there, but I think it came in with my list of so many things to do, and the practical worry of how the hell can i get all this done?
It sat there. I laid there. I tried to go back to sleep.. It sat there.. I laid there. and suddenly it shifted to get more comfortable.
Then, as I was being pressed into my mattress, something else occurred to me. I somehow remembered something a very wise man once told me over lunch last year, about the movie business: “make the movie you CAN make right now, not the movie you can’t make right now.” Trying to make the $100 million movie that you don’t have now, at the expense of making $2000 movie you can make now, is just finding a reason to put everything off. He said, make the $2000 movie while you’re planning the $100 million one. Just make the movie. Now you can imagine how much more weight that added to my predicament… ‘Great I have to make a movie… now!”
But then, the elephant turned and looked at me, and I’m thinking that it was about more than just making movies. It’s a metaphor, an allegory for life. Do what you can do. You don’t have to do ALL of it, you just have to do. And there is no point to waiting till everything is all perfect, that is just putting it off, and there is no point in putting it off. Life is a journey and I am already on the journey now; I should stop pretending like I’m still packing for it.. and realize that I’m on it, I don’t have to have it all perfect. Suddenly, I could breathe again.. I looked up and the elephant was getting off me.
Somedays you can take on the impossible and somedays you can only do what you can only do.
I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone else, but me. I’ll do what I can do today. I’m taking the elephant for a walk now; that’s all I can do today. Tomorrow, I’ll do what I can’t.
- Chuck
