Have you ever seen the movie Being John Malkovich? The main character, Craig (played by John Cusack) has always wanted to be a famous puppeteer, but he “pushes the issues” in his street corner shows and can’t seem to get a break. Through a truly bizarre twist of fate, Craig discovers a portal that takes you into John Malkovich’s brain. Craig realizes this is the ultimate kind of puppetry – and John Malkovich the actor becomes a living breathing puppet.
At one point, Craig (as Malkovich) visits Malkovich’s agent. Craig makes Malkovich say, “I want to stop being an actor. I want to be a puppeteer.” The agent does not even hesitate. “Great, you’re a puppeteer. I’ll make some calls.”
I think about this scene often, even though it’s really pretty silly and even though it’s from a movie that’s on the stranger side of the spectrum. I think about people who are pretty done with what they are doing. For a lot of people, it seems like the feeling is, “I need to destroy what I have been doing to start fresh.” But the scene from Being John Malkovich makes me think there is an alternative. “John Malkovich” used his power as an actor to change careers rather than walking away from Hollywood altogether. Even though it’s fictional, I think there’s something to that notion.
For a real-world example, consider this very blog site. Now if you’re new here, you might not know this, but for the last two years, this blog was very different from the way it is now. It was pretty much all over the place, for one thing. It was mostly about social media, with some “musings” on marketing, current events, and other stuff. Throughout 2012 I’d been feeling sort of done with that approach. I wanted to have more of a focus and I wanted to talk about other stuff here. I had two options. I could just delete my site and start over or I could rebuild here, keeping some elements (like all of the writing I’ve done over the last two years) but changing the look and feel of the site. I didn’t have to take subscribers to a new URL I didn’t have to destroy my online identity. I simply rebuilt using things that were still in existence.
How can you apply this to your life? Perhaps you have a job you’re not super happy about. Are there ways to take what you are doing and revamp it so that you can feel more content? Are you in a relationship that is rocky? Instead of walking away from the person, are there parts of the relationship that are good that you can focus on and then go from there?
There is a picture that has been circulating around Facebook. It’s a picture of an older couple and it says, “People ask how we’ve stayed together for so long. We come from an era when if something was broken, you fixed it.” There are some things, of course, that are not fixable. But sometimes I think we give up a little too early these days. Sometimes I think we destroy because it can seem easier than rebuilding. What do you think?
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dunechaser/142079521/ via Creative Commons
Again, Margie, spot on! We are quick to trash it and start over. It’s like we’ve all become bakers and chefs. If something goes wrong you start over. We’ve abandoned that can-do spirit of childhood and stopped tweaking our contraptions if they don’t work at first. Few things today are repairable. iDevices are trashed at the first sign of upgrade ability or damage, there are few tv repair people, cars are junked and the idea of there ever being a vintage 2012 anything seems very slim. Even clothing is seemingly cheap and disposable nowadays. And even relationships are ended with a simple unfriendly or unfollow that the difficulty there used to be in ending friendships or relationships poses little mental angst. Basically, we’re not all that invested in anything any more. We’re just another source of revenue for a business, with hundreds waiting to replace us. We’re just one of hundreds of “friends” on a social network.
It’s difficult to teach our children (in the grand sense of the word our sine I know you don’t have children yet) that relationships and things are worth keeping and fixing if instead we are demonstrating that we live in a disposable world where everyone and everything is easily replaced with a few clicks online.
@saving4someday Great points all the way around, Sara. Things from five years ago are now considered ancient, aren’t they? You buy a DVD of a movie and then the BluRay comes out, then the extended cut BluRay, then the director’s special edition. What happens to each preceding version? I’m fairly certain they get tossed or given away or who knows what.
This reminds me of part of an Eddie Izzard sketch. He talks about the difference between the US and Europe. In the US, 60 years old in the building world is like, amazing. Recreating something from the 1920s seems almost miraculous. Then you go to Europe where there are still buildings from the 11th century. What is the difference in cultures there? It’s hard to say.
That’s an entirely different tangent, isn’t it? Hmm…:)
@margieclayman funny you mention Europe and old buildings. I recently took my daughter to Italy and we went to the Colosseum (1st century AD) and the Forum (7th/8th century BC) as well as Pompeii. I was still mesmerized by it all, even having been to Israel as a teen. I overheard one teen ask her mom “Is this like a hundred years old or something?”, to which the mom replied, “Definitely more toward the or something.”
But it makes me think about an article I read this past week about a $4.2mil house in Northern California being torn down. Yes, the neighbor bought it for that much and tore it down b/c it was obstructing their view.
Love the lesson here. I see people burn bridges when they change careers or jobs or relationships and it’s not necessary. Everything you do has value that you build upon as you change and grow – destroying any of it is like denying parts of yourself. Another great post Margie!
@MomInManagement Hey Daria! Been a while since I’ve seen you around! 🙂 Burning bridges with people is particularly sad. If time runs out on you, which is so easily can, you can lose the opportunity to reclaim what you threw away. It’s a huge risk, but unfortunately many people do not realize that until it’s already too late.
Another awesome post Margie, honestly I have no idea how you do this every day. I would get burned out after the first month.
I am a walking, breathing, living representative of this post. Because of career and health issues that were bestowed upon me I decided I needed a change. At first I wanted to throw my entire career out the window do a 180 and try something entirely new. I did not burn any bridges or trash my former life, I just forked in a different direction and tried a new path.
The new thing didn’t go as well as I’d hoped but I recently had the opportunity to jump back into the old career via a temporary employment contract. This gave me the opportunity to rediscover some of my skills and talents, try a few new ones and it reminded me what I enjoy about working with a good team of people towards a common goal.
The contract will soon come to an end and I need to quickly figure out what I will do next. It’s both scary and exciting at the same time. What I now realize is that I need to fuse the best things from my previous career with new things that I have learned over the last two years and strike out in a new direction that encompasses all of it cohesively.
How am I going to do that I have not a clue but stay tuned because it will be one heck of a journey.
@Fierce_Chat Now THAT sounds exciting!
It really is silly, isn’t it, how we insist on just starting with a blank slate. Must be Americans’ Puritan roots or something. Factually, life is more like a fabric that is woven from many different parts. Different stitches can be pulled here and there but the general integrity of the fabric can remain. Too many people view issues as black-or-white, this-or-that, all or nothing. There’s a lot of grey in life 🙂
There is a lot of nonsense out there about how you should keep a blog. I hate this niche approach. If you are selling a product that needs to be that specific, then it makes a lot of sense. For a personal blog, why? Again, it always comes back to what our goals are. Our why…
I agree, you don’t have to raze things to the ground. Nor do you have to apologize if things change. Those you really enjoy what you do will stay.