Announce Your Truth
It’s valuable to acknowledge that when most people hear the word improv, they look for the exit. Their backs start sweating and all energy goes into avoiding eye contact by trying to decipher the pattern on the carpet below them. People hate improv.
I’ve been improvising for over 15 years and I’m one of my least favorite phrases is “and now for some audience participation.” Get. Me. Out of there. And yet, I love it. I love performing it, I love teaching it, I love introducing people to it. For me, it’s less about the show and more about the philosophy. “Applied improvisation” is a somewhat new phrase that describes the borrowing of various rules, ideas and mantras from improv and applying them to everyday life: business, sports, relationships, education and, of course, parenting. This is my kind of improv.
You can read about all of those various connections through my blog posts. There is one, in particular, that is sticking with me today.
One of the most common questions I get from beginner improviser is “but what if get stuck?” It makes sense. When you’re taking such a risk as improvising, one of the driving fears is going to be feeling exposed and vulnerable; helpless and frozen. There are a number of antidotes to this inevitable poison. My favorite, though, is to “Announce Your Truth.”
The premise is that whenever you are stuck in a scene simply breathe and announce whatever your immediate truth is. Anything from, “I have no idea where I am right now” to “we just invented chicken cats and now we’re traveling to Mars.” Something amazing happens when you announce your truth. You simultaneous let your scene partner(s) know, “hey, I’m lost and am having trouble. I’m stuck” while also sending up emergency signals screaming “HELP!” And what happens? Everyone swoops in to offer assistance and clarity and the scene gets reignited. Essentially, your partners say “I see you. You’re not alone. Come with me. I have a way out. It’s going to be okay.”
This may be the greatest tool my wife and I have ever utilized in parenting (and our relationship but more on that in a later post). If there is one guarantee it’s that, as parents, you’re going get stuck. You’ll be under slept and your baby will be gassy and you won’t know what to do and you’ll feel like a failure as a parent. It is going to happen. And I promise you, the most liberating thing in the world will be to turn to your partner and say, “I’m drowning. I don’t know what to do and I feel frustrated at this little baby.”
Your desire is going to be to be a super parent. You’ll want to be a rockstar. You’ll want to wake up for every feeding while doing laundry and the dishes and writing the next great American novel. That’s awesome. That’s the kind of aspiration that makes a great parent but… It’s. Not. Going. To. Happen. Announce your truth.
Yesterday (Aug 30), I returned to work as a teacher after the summer break. The night before I broke. I stood in the kitchen, looked at my wife and erupted into tears. “I don’t want to go back,” I cried. This was my truth.
I love teaching and I love where I teach. Mine was not a crisis of career or workplace. I didn’t want to leave my family. It felt unnatural and returning to school felt so unimportant (it’s not, by the way) compared to what we were doing as parents at home. #2 was only a week old. Perhaps surprisingly, I was feeling more emotion about leaving my oldest. The global pandemic resulting from Covid 19 robbed so many of us of so many things. It stole loved ones, it stole education, it stole experiences, it stole romance, it stole trust and so much more. But the pandemic also gave my wife and I something we never anticipated. Time and presence. We were there for all of the milestones of our oldest because we were home. We saw her crawl, we saw her walk, we heard her talk and we laughed with her. Going back to school this week marked the beginning of me NOT being there and it shattered me. This was my truth.
On top of this, I was leaving my wife, one week after giving birth, her body still healing physically, to handle two kids on her own. We had done almost everything together as parents. #1 was six months old when the world shut down and my wife and I have been mostly side by side since. We work well together; we parent well together. My return to work felt like a betrayal of her and the partnership we formed. It was again, for me, marked the beginning of not being there. This is still my truth.
Announcing your truth isn’t exclusive to emotional breakdowns with your partner. It works as a parenting tool with your children, as well. When you think about it, it’s staggering how conditioned we are to lie to our kids and subsequently teach them to lie. We make up untruths for the most basic of things. We fabricate stories for why they can’t watch a show or have another cookie; why they can’t stay up later or why they can’t put stickers on the furniture. Most of the time we don’t need to lie or to make up stories, yet we default to that. And kids are intuitive, they pick up on that and then they mimick our behavior.
What would happen if we announced our truth? “Daddy’s really tired today. He had to stay at work late and then mowed the lawn and graded papers. When I’m tired, something as small as you going to bed on time makes a huge difference for me.”
I’ll let you know when I have 2 and a 4 year old and my truth is a consistent “AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” The great experiment called parenting continues until then.
For now, I find myself again in the dark peace of early morning. I’m preparing for day 2 back to school with a little more confidence and a little less dread; trusting that a new routine will surface and comfort will be the result. As I sip my second cup of coffee, I can’t help but dream about a world where we prioritize parenting (of all kinds) over the grind; a world where raising humans of character devoted to making the world a better place is valued through action and not just lip service; a world where time and presence is the norm, not the result of a once-in-a-hundred-years global pandemic.
Now, that’s a truth I’d be happy to announce. Let’s get unstuck, shall we?
