Assemble the ensemble?

No, do not worry, this is not a new superhero movie, it is instead a casting call for a production that we call life. Many people have the illusion that they are taking part in the movie of their own lives with themselves in the starring role, and they can almost imagine the reviews, captivating, thrilling and extraordinary. Which when you say it out loud, does sound at best delusional, at worst borderline neurotic, and yet, it is an incredibly common default state of mind, to have the narrative drama running in our heads. Even if we do not speak of it, and most people have the sense to keep such fancies to themselves, knowing that is only several short steps to thinking that you are actually Napoleon. There are uncomfortably few hurdles between the two delusions with the dividing border between them, being the mark in the line between sanity and a live in an institution, but delusions no matter how commonplace are still dangerous and that voice in your head needs to be dealt with.

Luckily, there is an alternative internal commentary that turns out to be even better than a solo central performance. It might mean giving up being the star of your own show but it gives you something better than just yourself giving a performance to be judged upon, you give up the fantasy of being better than others, which turns out to be a fairly lonely experience that we can witness in the lives of so many movie stars, that have lost the love of the process and become slaves to the results of external validation. Instead you can decide to be happy now, to embrace the most joyful possible process that it is probable to have, that is to join an ensemble that works together to create something greater than their collective selves.

The joy of the ensemble process is that there is not one single star, you instead join a community that supports each other in being the best that they can, that develops each other's talents and where the central purpose is the work, not the pursuit for the credit for the idea. It means that a poor day is not the end of the world, a poor performance is not your sole responsibility, you work together on the skills so that continuous improvement is possible, you support each other not through the lens of a game where you are trading favours and support but where the mission is the central character, the purpose of the endeavour and is a challenge that can only be achieved with others.

Apollo 11 was not just a few people in an aluminium box, it was tens of thousands of engineers, a hundred thousand people in support supplying parts, running the systems that achieved something that was simply beyond what one person could do in themselves an entire lifetime. Indeed the numbers of hours worked to put one flag on a rock in space would be in the millions of years, and considering that we had barely figured out how to use fire 50,000 years ago, it gives you some idea of the power of ensembles.

There is a great person's debate between historians, whether great people are that important or not compared to the political, economic and scientific influences on history. Putting aside the general tendencies of people of absolute power in becoming immoral, evil and a bit murderery/genocidal, and that you could be one of the good ones, what they actually achieve is always debatable, it is almost always a case of them being the right person for the time, having the skills and abilities to take advantage of luck, rather than having the luck and then developing the skills that's required to take advantage of it.

It is hard to fail to notice that most of these people are not happy, or not particularly well-developed in other aspects of their lives, and people say what about Gandhi or Buddha, but if you are basing your happiness and the chances of you becoming such a person, just remember you are taking a gamble on a one in 10 billion chance (and am really not exaggerating on these odds, think how many people there are and which of your heroes you really want to be). So many heroes are just plain flawed, many are actively despicable, crippled by disease, mental illness and/or drug addiction, and that is just to start the list of problems.

When you are looking for happy people to emulate, I cannot recommend enough turning off the TV and putting away the biographies of the famous. Instead look towards your own community, your friends and family, people who are known to you and that you have witnessed up close, almost invariably the relationship between their external success, their achievements and how happy they are, how highly you regard their character and quality of their actions are, there is rarely any correlation between the two. Happy, well-rounded people rarely spend a hundred hours a week on their career, they have passions and interests they have time for families, friends, they give their communities energy and commitment, but they do not become defined by those commitments, they change with time. They are not the heads of several committees, they are probably healthy and happy but not ultra-marathon runners, they do not excel in one thing but they always turn up.

And that is what you should be focusing on, what are the actions that you want to take for your own life, spreading the energy across all the aspects of your life is a choice not to invest all of it in one aspect. There is nothing moral or particularly right about which choice you make, but you certainly want the right head-on for the choices that you do make. If you are trying to become a great lawyer, writer, politician, that you do want the story where you are the star of your show, however if you want to be happy, you should not just settle on being part of an ensemble, you should embrace it and wholeheartedly become a member of something greater than yourself. You get to give a small part of your energy to co-create a piece of art that is impossible for a single person to create on their own. You get to be part of the process is solely available to the human experience, and is without doubt beautiful but not personal, you do not get to own it, it is not yours and that is a relief.

By freeing yourself from the self-imposed expectations of a star performance, you get instead to be supported and supportive. You have to freedom to fail, to improve and to not worry about exceeding personal bests in favour of collective experiences, unique moments that bring you joy because they are so special, so unusual because of the necessity for cooperation, like a choreographed dance that spontaneously appears in the performance of people you know and trust each other. The ensemble is not limited to yourself, it is capable of growth beyond your imagination and by accepting your role you become a part of it, it is the very best of relationships, where everybody feels listen to and understood within the confines of the process. You get to be part of the greatest ensemble that has ever existed, the human family and the incredible things that we create together.