Sometimes you’re not ready for a challenge, but you do it anyway

By David McElroy · May 30, 2013

There’s a building not far from my house that takes me back to December of 2004 each time I drive past. It’s not a good memory, but rather one that still gives me shivers eight and a half years later.

It’s the memory of a night I suddenly couldn’t remember what I was doing and freaked out as I tried to do my job.

We were close to finishing the first day of shooting for my short film, “We’re the Government — and You’re Not.” Even though I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was the writer and director, and I was sharing the producer duties. I honestly didn’t know until that day just how little I knew.

Even though the day had been a blur, things had generally gone well except for my car having a flat tire at the next-to-last shooting location of the day. (I rode around on the little “doughnut spare” all weekend because I didn’t have time to fix the tire.) I was waiting for one last prop to come in the mail. It was days late, but we thought it would be there. I ran to my house and it wasn’t there — and it was time to shoot the scene. I didn’t have a back-up plan.

The prop was an old-fashioned hand-crank calculator. It was to be used with glee by the IRS agent in the audit scene. In my mind, it was a key to the scene, because I knew exactly what it was supposed to look like. But it hadn’t arrived. I had somehow mismanaged the process of getting it there — and having a back-up solution — so I started panicking. After quickly driving to a couple of other places in a fruitless attempt to find some other prop, I drove back to the location where we were shooting the IRS scene — the building I mentioned at the beginning.

I went inside to find problems. The owner of the building had decided to toss us out, so the production manager was begging, pleading and lying to get us just a few more minutes. The two actors and the director of photography were waiting for me to give orders for the scene.

But my mind was fried. I could barely remember what was going on, much less what the scene was. I suddenly had no recollection of what we had planned for the scene, much less how I’d do it without the missing prop. I was in full-scale panic mode.

The director of photography was the amazingly talented Alicia Robbins. I pulled her into the next room — away from the actors — and said, “Alicia, I’m suddenly losing it. I can’t remember what our plan for this scene was. Will you tell me what we’re doing before I go in there and embarrass myself?”

Alicia saved me by basically making that scene happen. While they were waiting for me to get back to the location, she had worked out something for the actors to do that didn’t involve the missing prop. One of the actors happened to be a very talented guy by the name of J.J. Marrs. Between the two of them, Alicia and J.J. saved the scene and made me look better than I had any right to look.

Even though the film went on to be pretty successful for a low-budget short from a first-time director, that moment of meltdown has stayed with me ever since. In fact, I don’t think I had been aware of how much it had affected me until I started work recently on my next film, “John Crispin for President.”

For all these years, I’ve been terrified to make another film. I blamed it on everything you can think of. The unexpected success of the first one made me fear that it had been a fluke and that I’d disappoint certain people (one person in particular) if I tried again. I blamed it on lack of money. I blamed it on other things. I did everything in the book to avoid taking another chance, because I didn’t want to feel that horrible feeling of being ashamed of myself for not being prepared.

It wasn’t until after I started working on “John Crispin” that it hit me. More than anything else, I was running from those awful minutes when I felt like a fool and lost the ability to think or remember or do much of anything coherently. I had felt shame, because there’s a part of me that believes I’m supposed to be perfect. And this horrible little meltdown reminded me clearly of just how imperfect I was. I’ve been afraid to experience that again.

Since I’ve been working on “John Crispin,” I’ve realized something. I guess I might have known it intellectually, but I’ve experienced it in a way that felt more real.

I’ve realized that you’re never really ready for the next big step in life. If you feel ready, you’re probably not taking much of a step. You’re probably just repeating what you’ve already done over and over before. You’re probably staying in your comfort zone. You’re probably wasting your life.

I needed to step out of the little box where I’ve been comfortable and take another scary step toward things I said I wanted. I don’t enjoy feeling uncomfortable, but I know I’ve needed to do it. I’ve been playing it safe ever since I made that first short. As a result, I haven’t done a whole lot of things that I’m proud of. Playing it safe lost something very important to me about four years ago and ever since, it’s made me feel that my world was shrinking. I didn’t feel like myself anymore. I felt afraid much of the time.

Since I started work on “John Crispin,” I feel like my old self again. I’m taking chances that I haven’t taken lately, and I know that it’s possible I’ll fall on my face. But playing it safe has made me feel dead. Taking a risk to get what I want is making me feel alive again. The results almost don’t matter as much as taking the chance.

I’m not ready for the project I’m working on. I’m making it up as I go. I’m making mistakes. But I’m doing it even though I’m not ready — and I’m starting to think that’s the only way to do what you really need to be doing.

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What if your daughter were about to start kindergarten and you went to the affluent school where she was about to go and discovered that the school was teaching nonsense? That’s exactly what happened to an education consultant in Colorado who recently visited his daughter’s new school. Everybody was nice, but when the kindergarten teacher talked about their methods of teaching reading, he cringed. She was using “progressive” methods that were debunked decades ago. He’s learning that most schools use similar techniques that don’t work, simply because schools of education are committed to ideas and techniques based on ideology instead of cognitive science. So why do so many people entrust their children’s future to these well-meaning but incompetent people? It’s one of the most underreported scandals of modern learning. Read his summary of what he’s found here and then check out the radio documentary to which he refers where you can find out more.

I really enjoy political satire. You might remember that my first short film was political satire. But there’s a trend in political satire today which I find disturbing — and this graphic is a great example. This fake promotional ad for Fox News was placed on New York City subways recently. When I found it on social media, people who lean to the political left were smirking and enjoying this attack on their “stupid” opponents. But this isn’t satire. It’s just a mean-spirited attempt to say, “Those who agree with me are smarter than you idiots who watch Fox News.” It’s a smirking, nasty attack which makes no point other than to claim superiority over people for the sin of disagreeing. I absolutely loathe Fox News, but I also loathe CNN and MSNBC and all the other media outfits who pander to partisans and intentionally try to divide people. If you want to show that you’re a small-minded bigot who doesn’t understand his opponents, just pretend your enemies are all stupid and evil. They’re not. The truth is a lot more complicated. Ideas are ripe for satire, but that involves creative thinking, not just nasty personal attacks.

When I have a bad day, my first reaction is to want to turn to someone I love. But my next instinct is a paradox. If I can’t call someone and I can’t touch someone and I can’t be with someone who loves me, I have an overwhelming desire to be alone. Tuesday was an unpleasant day. I had to argue with my bank about something. (I won, but still.) Something happened at work that made me want to walk out and never return, although I understand that nobody else involved would understand. Tonight, someone on Facebook who I barely knew reacted badly to something I said — for reasons I’m completely baffled about — and called me a “jackass” and unfriended me. I’d like to talk with someone I love. I’d like to spend time with a loved one and feel safe and understood. But since I can’t do that, I crave the opposite. I want to find a cabin somewhere and disappear for a month. We humans are social creatures. We need each other. But there are days when others cause enough hurt that a few weeks of silence would be a relief. This has been one of those days.

Democracy is going to die — and it’s all because the human brain prefers easy answers to complex problems. You and I were born during the golden age of democracy. It was a period during which it was assumed that democracy was the natural evolution of civic governance. But Dr. Shawn W. Rosenberg is challenging that idea. He’s a leader in the study of political psychology and he says research convinces him that the human brain isn’t wired for self-rule and that democracy is heading toward collapse. In a paper presented this year to the International Society of Political Psychologists, Rosenberg argues that the human brain naturally favors simple answers to complex problems, which tends to favor the rise of authoritarian strongmen who offer confident and simplistic solutions. Anyone who’s paying attention sees this happening around the world already. Donald Trump isn’t the cause of the problem, but he is an early example of this outcome in action. All authoritarian rulers come to power offering simplistic solutions — just as Adolph Hitler did in Germany and Benito Mussolini did in Italy. I’ve argued for 20 years that this country is heading toward social and economic collapse and I’ve made the case that things are going to get ugly when that happens, at least for those who are not prepared. Many people will ignore this evidence, of course, because they have too much emotionally invested in the idea that democracy will prevail — but that is just another example of clinging to a simple answer to a very complex problem. Don’t be surprised when things get ugly.

Political candidates are liars. They can’t help it, because lying to voters is the only thing that gets them elected. They have to promise things which are not possible. I used to write political promises for my clients, so I know this very well. None of my successful clients ever did anything which I promised for them. Every day lately, I see new promises from presidential candidates. I know they’re lying about what they will do if elected — and I assume they know they’re lying, too. When a society changes, the change starts from culture — and that starts with the values which individuals hold. I hate many things about this society. I want a lot of changes. When I was young, I believed the way to change those things was by becoming a political leader. I know better today. We live like hamsters on a wheel or rats in a maze. Government can’t change that. Only we can make those changes for ourselves. The next time you hear a politician promising to change your life — your work life or your home life or your children’s future — remember that the person is lying. Don’t wait for politicians. Take the initiative and change your own life. Nobody else can do it for you.

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