Announce What You Want

On January 1, 2023, this post appeared. That morning, one year ago, as I contemplated the forthcoming year, I announced what I wanted. And it surprised me.

I’d asked this question of myself quite a few times since discovering the yellowed cardboard with my mother’s particular penmanship after her death. Nothing I’d announced had hit just right. Mostly, I answered with things I thought I should want, or things that my inner Facebook-Ad-Life-Coach thought I should want: “To work with famous clients who are doing good in the world, like Michelle Obama, Greta Thunberg, Doctor’s Without Borders, Kamala Harris, and Malala Yousafzai.” It sounded great, to reach high as I entered the Empty Nest years. But it didn’t feel great. It felt superficial. I’m already working with people and organizations who expertly, thoughtfully, passionately, doggedly, make positive change for us all. I am constantly amazed, challenged, awakened, and thrilled by their purpose, their words, their vital work in the world. I am honored to work with them. I am grateful. It is more than enough.

So, on the first day of 2023 the surprising thing I found myself announcing, out-loud, to the quiet morning kitchen was:

“I want to…play a big Shakespearean role…but the best roles are for younger women…or for men…Fuck it! I want to play KING LEAR!”

It felt so bold, so outrageous, so giddily insane, that I burst into laugher. Wow, the freedom of simply uttering those blasphemous words sent me soaring. How dare I?

Within days, the project came running at me full-steam: site specific, moving from place to place, small cast playing multiple roles, workshopping the script and production over time. My friend and artistic muse, Bree Luck, and I started reading the text out-loud and discovered just how timely the themes are: speaking truth to power, nepotism, privilege, inherited wealth, honesty, courage, societal role, family, love. I asked the wonderful writer/director/wrangler of artists and teens, Miller Murray Susen to be my partner and collaborator, and my friend, Karl Sikkenga, to distill the Bard’s words as he has for his work in prisons, schools, and with his company, Brevity Shakespeare.

Neither having world-renowned clients nor acting as an 80 year-old man in a local production is more worthy, more important, better in any way than the other. And who can know which would actually do more good in the world? Art can make seismic shifts in the way we think and behave. The only difference between the two is me. At this very moment in my life.

Sometimes we don’t have to have a good reason or any reason at all to want what we want.

I invite us all today, to “Announce What You Want.” And let me know what surprises you!

Original Post of January 1, 2023

What would happen if we announced what we wanted? Out loud. Would the sky fall down? Would we stun people? Would we stun ourselves? Would relationships change? Would our lives move in a different direction?

Why are we so reluctant to simply say what we want? Do we even know what we want? Announcing is not demanding or even asking, it’s just putting our wants into words. A statement. And yet…

My mother was the kind of person who would stop on the highway to pick up garbage, who eschewed milk in plastic bottles, and re-used wrapping paper year after year. She also saved all of those pieces of cardboard the dry-cleaners used in men’s shirts in the 70s.

Months after she died, I found myself in a room stacked with 61 boxes sent from her house in Cleveland. Boxes filled with photos, postcards, birth certificates, old passports.

And one piece of dry-cleaner cardboard with her distinctive handwriting and the words, “ANNOUNCE WHAT YOU WANT” in block letters.

I wonder if a therapist or friend asked her to just say what she wanted, say it out-loud. “Clurie, announce what you want!”

The cardboard is now pinned to the wall of my office reminding me and all who enter to announce what we want.

This week, give this a try. Stand tall, take a deep breath, and announce what you want. Out-loud.

Let me know what happens, how it feels, if it hurts or liberates or stuns. And if the sky falls down upon our heads, at least we’ve spoken some truth.