The anxiety seems to increase proportionate to the media reports of the rebounding economy. Why am I not feeling the financial trickledown? Could it be the number of homeless clearly visible as I drive or walk around Oakland? Could it be the spate of thefts at one of the schools where I teach? Looking at an empty glass -- not even half full -- saps our energies, leaves us desperate for a drop of hope.
In class this week, I used an exercise I learned from one of our teaching artists that introduces the acting technique of intention / objective. We watched students saunter into the classroom in their typical mode. Then we watched them enter again, this time knowing that there was a dollar bill hidden in the room, and that the person to find it could keep it. As one student pointed out, the second time they entered "they had an agenda." Students really wanted that dollar.
Thoughts of upcoming government grant proposal deadlines, cash flow issues, fundraising that needs to happen, seize us with icy worry. Yet, the antidote to non profit anxiety? Our reason for existing in the first place. Art itself and the community it nurtures. Just one moment seeing a group of students who normally quarrel happily planning a skit together, or a woman having the courage to read a poem to others about childhood abuse, or a small child making up beautiful lines in his character as a cloud, opens up my heart and makes me glad to be alive.
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