Stay on Target
Breath, Movement, Mindfulness — The Jedi Art of Staying on Target
There it was. 1977.
Denver, Colorado.
Dad and me on a business trip. Wow!
I was eight years old.
Dad was considering taking a job in Colorado and moving the family from Southern California.
Somehow, I scored a father-son trip with him to check out the company.
Did I feel special?
You bet I did!
So Dad had to do what Dad had to do: go to the office, shake hands, meet everybody, be courted and enticed to uproot his entire life and bring us all out to Colorado.
The owners of the company were really quite forward-thinking for their day.
Today it’s quite common to hear of companies having recreational rooms within the company—maybe a gym, sauna.
A lot of perks.
But back then, I remember they had a room with a bumper pool table.
I was ready to move right then.
And everyone there doted on me. They may have figured if they treated me with kindness and showed me a good time, it would be easier for Dad to make that decision.
I remember spending all day just playing in that room.
It was fun.
And Dad—well, Dad had something else up his sleeve to make this trip memorable.
So there we were, in a state far, far away...
And I was introduced to a movie that was to change the course of our culture in America and around the world.
That movie…
I bet you can guess what it was.
He took me to this huge cinema.
They had seats that reclined—so comfy. Remember, this was 1977. Seems like they all do now.
And the entire evening was a blur of fascination, curiosity, excitement, dread, and heroes.
The music was phenomenal.
I still hum it to this day when I feel like I need to be a hero!
And there I was, totally enraptured by the movie.
Then came the scene where they’re trying to blow up the Death Star.
So exciting.
So tense…
Stay on target.
Stay on target.
I can’t hold it.
Stay on target.
And that has stuck with me forever.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
There have been many things in life that I wanted to achieve.
And yet there was this repeating voice of disbelief that would run through my head:
You’re not good enough.
You’ll never succeed at that.
Why are you even trying?
I had forgotten to stay on target.
I didn’t know how to stay on target.
My mind back then was full of anxiety and worry—and maybe a little neurosis.
It was hard to focus and concentrate.
School was a challenge.
I felt different from everyone.
I heard sounds and songs and rhythms. I saw patterns of music when I closed my eyes.
But I didn’t know how to convey them.
It felt like I was fluent in a language that was foreign to everyone else.
Almost like I was on a different planet—far, far away—and I didn’t have R2-D2 or C-3PO to help me communicate.
I recall at one point my parents were frustrated with my behavior and knew I was suffering. And bless their souls, they sought help for me.
I remember going through a battery of tests.
Intelligence, cognition, free-flow thinking, personality.
The works.
It was interesting.
I wanted to know who I was.
It was challenging waiting for my test results.
“Who am I?” I would silently scream to myself.
Finally, the doctor called us in to discuss me.
I remember him saying they had come up with a diagnosis.
“We believe your son is autistic.”
Then I jumped up and exclaimed:
“HA! I knew I was an artist...”
And they all rolled their eyes.
It almost seemed audible.
Well, at any rate, the doctor was wrong.
Or at least that diagnosis never became the explanation for who I was.
I was just different, as you and I are different.
No big deal.
I see things through a lens that is specific to me.
That is meaningful and authentic to me.
Just as you do.
But still, how to stay on target?
I was still baffled.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Years later, I found myself semi-successful but wanting to explore a few more things about life.
So I enrolled in community college just for kicks.
And that changed my life.
Some of you may know that I’m very dramatic, and I love that about myself.
The stories my parents would tell about me as a young child…
But that’s for another time.
I enrolled in a theater arts class.
In that class, we had to go out to different theaters and watch different types of plays on different types of stages—musicals, straight plays, Greek tragedies, all the things.
I loved it.
I loved writing about it.
I loved exploring how it made me feel.
But I still felt like there were other people who could do it better than me.
There were other people more qualified to offer opinions and insights.
And those voices of doubt rose up in me like the fierce ten-headed Hydra.
No sooner would I strike one self-limiting thought down than ten more would take its place.
Dramatic, no?
I remember one day in class our teacher saying we were going to watch a film of a live presentation from Broadway.
Oh yeah, Broadway—Big Time.
And I’m like, heck yeah, let’s do this!
She said it was one of Sondheim’s lesser-known, less-popular musicals, but she thought we would find it interesting.
And then came the musical that changed my life:
Sunday in the Park with George.
So many good things.
Originally performed with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters.
Such fantastic actors and singers.
One particular scene stood out to me then as strongly as it does today.
George is a struggling artist.
He has stopped producing his art.
He is frustrated.
As Dot pleads with him to continue creating, George laments that it has all been done before. It has all been said. Someone else has probably already done it—and done it better.
And then comes the idea that stuck with me.
Dot reminds him that maybe those things have been said before...
But they haven’t been said by you.
And I stopped.
And I still stop when I remember that day—it was truly a flashbulb moment.
How many songs have been written with the same chord progressions?
Overlaid with the same emotional motif?
With similar sounds and melodies?
And yet they sound unique when the artist expresses themselves from that deep place of authenticity.
And my doubts and self-limits started to shift into smaller and smaller voices.
I didn’t need to learn how to be creative.
It was a remembering of what has always been there.
It was that game of hide-and-seek that the universe plays with us.
It was learning to stay with an idea, a creative impulse, long enough for it to bear fruit.
To say it with my voice.
Just as you would say it with your voice.
But still, I had no direct strategy for how to “stay on target.”
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Then…
dramatic music
Enter stage left: Yoga.
No, not Yoda.
But very similar.
I found that my body and breath could change my outlook.
I learned to sit with myself when sitting with myself was horribly uncomfortable.
And then I found something amazing starting to happen.
I could concentrate, even if just for a little while.
I could calm the doubts and distractions of my mind, even if just for a little while.
I had a strategy.
I had a means.
I had a way.
Staying on target, for me, requires the ability to concentrate for more than just one or two minutes.
To lose myself.
To lose time.
To be completely absorbed and immersed in the present.
In the moment.
In the here and now.
I found that when I regularly moved my body with intention, sensory awareness, and breath, something changed.
Because when I was a kid, I jumped from one thing to the next.
And that influenced and swayed how I approached everything.
So when I feel:
I can’t hold it.
When the target has been lost...
I no longer have to grasp at what I need to do.
Simply, I…
On the target I stay.
(Yeah, Yoga and Yoda are big teachers of mine.)
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
ROAR with Love,
Danny
The Emotional Driver
“Emotion Is the Note. You Are the Song.”
