not getting the lead in my high school musical.
I know...you are already amazed...
Right about now you are saying things to yourself like, "Impossible! How on earth did you survive such treachery?" or perhaps, "Surely no man could do such things!"
But it's true I tell you!
Ok...for realsies though, up to this 16 year old point in my life, I had experienced some very unhappy and disappointing things, but not getting the lead in my high school musical was probably the first extreme disappointment I had had in my life. Lame? Sure. But think about what was super important to you when you were 16 years old...I'm sure there was an element of lame in there somewhere. This experience, however lame it might have been, literally changed my life. It has become one of those sucky life experiences that I am truly grateful for.
I was a pretty involved kid in high school. I did choir and student government, I had several friends and got pretty good grades. But for me, what I imagined to be the pinnacle of my high school career and what I worked on up until that point was to be the lead in the musical. And truth be known...the odds were working in my favor, if I do say so myself. I mean, I don't want to brag or anything, but I was one of only two sophomores that made the Productions team (please, hold your applause until the end) and the other sophomore was Nick...and everybody knew he was a weirdo.
My junior year I was a bit miffed when The Weirdo got "head waiter" and I got "assistant head-waiter" in Hello Dolly, and his part in the dinner theater was slightly better than mine but these were easily justified away. "I'm glad I don't have to have the part where I have an accent." "I wanted the fun-loving part instead of the romantic guy anyway." You know, that kind of stuff. At the end of our Junior year it was announced that the main-stage musical being done the next year was "The Scarlet Pimpernel."
Everything was primed. I was going to be a senior, and the title role of the musical was a male character. I was charged and ready to fight for that title role, but I also had a safety net: there was a villain lead that was male as well. (By now, The Weirdo had been upgraded to...lets say...quirky frenemy) So if Quirky Frenemy came with his A-game, I'd be disappointed but not totally desolated. Everyone loves an amazing villain, right?
I worked for a shocking amount of months on my audition song and monologue. The teacher/director, Mr. Ferrin, told us that he wanted us to go against decorum and prepare stuff from the actual show for our audition songs (for those of you who may not be "in the know," typically you wouldn't audition for a show singing a song from that show. I'm sure there are lot of reasons for that, but...just don't question it). So, with this permission, I of course went straight for the Pimpernel's songs. In fact, my voice teacher (who, fun fact, is now my mother-in-law) fashioned a little medley of several of his songs so I could really sell it.
The time for auditions had arrived. I put on my specially bought outfit for the occasion (classy charcoal gray pants, and a maroon turtle-neck sweater...doesn't that just scream "artsy person in the early 2000s?"). I sang through my song, performed my monologue, and was requested to come to call-backs. Some time later I joined the 30 or so other kids on the stage for the call-backs.
Call-backs were a tumultuous mix of excitement and anxiety. We were all asked to read different parts and sing different excerpts from the show. After awhile, the group of 30 was narrowed down to 15, then more reading and singing. Eventually it was shaved down to 10, and it was slowly becoming clearer who the director was thinking of for which parts. Its funny, but I actually remember everyone that was left when it was narrowed down to 6. There were 3 boys and 3 girls being evaluated for the 2 male and 1 female leads. The moment of truth came when he told the girls to leave and we were left with just the three of us boys. My nerves were increasing...they were clearly having a difficult time with this decision, and in the end, one of us would not be getting a lead. I was prepared to be up against Quirky McFrenemy, but this third guy was unexpected! After yet more singing and reading the three of us started to get prepared to leave when the director started giving the speech about when the cast list would be posted. I was shocked when after his speech, he told the other two to go, and asked me to stay!
He had me sing through songs for both the Pimpernel and the villain, and then read through some lines for both characters as well. Whatever nerves I had before about not getting one of the two main parts slowly started to fade away. Clearly they LOVED everything about me and were just so torn on which of the two parts would feature my very best qualities! I went home that afternoon nervous, but pretty much sure that I had locked in a lead role.
It was later than night that they posted the cast list. I was there about 20 minutes before they said they were going to post it...but I had to be sneaky because I knew that they weren't going to post it with people waiting there. So me and my two friends (who, fun fact, are now my wife and my brother-in-law) smartly waited in the bushes next to the door. The second the list was posted I sprung out of the bushes and feverishly started scanning from the top:
By now I had accepted the fact that I didn't get the lead. I got Armand. I was Marguerite's lame little brother, that for all intents and purposes could have been removed from the plot line...and you weren't missing much. I pulled myself together however, and outwardly I tried really hard to have a good attitude. My mom had given me some good advice to just try really hard to find opportunities for random acts of kindness during rehearsals and get to know more of the kids in the show.
I took that talk and decided that I was going to try to make a change in myself. I was going to try everything that I could to just be happy for Nick and Brad. To not see their being really good as a statement about how awful I was. Because the reality was that they were both really good. I kept seeing the only option as "Nick and Brad are good, so I must really suck." I wanted to try really hard to adopt the possible reality that "Nick and Brad are really good. Also, I am good." Why was my brain so determined to make their being good mean I'm really bad?! I worked really hard at it...and it was in fact, a lot of work. I had been conditioning my brain to accept this reality for so long that training it to do something else, to just be happy for others' success and not see life as a competition I was losing, was extremely challenging.
And lets be honest...It is still extremely challenging in many ways.
Over the years I have improved my confidence (the real confidence, the kind that sees my worth and value being unchanged or hindered by someone else doing well) in some pretty profound ways in my life. I no longer walk into a group of men and immediately feel like a loser. I feel like I'm a good friend for the most part, and its not too hard to just be glad when I see my friends and family accomplishing great things in their personal, professional, and spiritual lives. But, if I'm honest, that old demon, Compare-i-tron (yeah, that doesn't work either), comes back far too often when say, I'm at the gym and he tells me that I'm a fat slob compared to the David statues walking around everywhere Or when I'm sitting in church and everyone is moving in and out of leadership positions, and I'm over here like, "for the love of Pete, will you men just come to choir practice for the Christmas program already?! Its been 4 years!" (note to anyone in my ward that might read this...this should not indicate to anyone that I'm dying to be in a leadership position, on the contrary I'm glad to have my low key calling, I say this strictly to illustrate the whole issue of Comparinor the Terrible).
The point is, over the years comparing myself to others has robbed me of being happy in otherwise completely satisfactory situations, and I'm tired of it.
I want to change, and I know that the first step in changing is stepping out of hiding places. To stop using other people's success as a hiding place for my insecurities to fester and grow. I have to own the demon of comparison as my responsibility to change, and to start recognizing when it is engaging with me. When I hear and recognize its whispering I have to stop, calmly face it, and say "no thanks. I appreciate what you are trying to do, you're trying to make sense of this situation, but I've learned by now that you don't really know what you are talking about," and then make a deliberate decision to be satisfied with my efforts and value.
I know that just like every other demon that exists in my life, if I just calmly stop feeding it what it wants, it eventually gets bored and walks away.
*Disclaimer*
Please note that the previously mentioned story is the emotional account of a 16 year old. My account of the situation might have painted a picture of Mr. Ferrin that makes him seem like a jerk or something but let me assure you, he is not. He was SO gracious and good to me that year. In fact, if any of you have known me long enough to remember having seen The Scarlet Pimpernel, you might remember that Armand kept showing up in strange places and singing lines of songs that were not his to sing. Mr. Ferrin and the production staff gave my character lines and songs that weren't written in the script. I'm sure that was because he recognized my dismay and did what he could to help my poor fragile ego. Later in the year single cast me as the only one single cast in a show where the other parts were triple cast! He really was and is a wonderful guy and I'm so happy to occasionally get to still have association with him.
Also, Nick and Brad have become a couple of the most important friendships of my life. Brad is such a truly good and talented person and Nick and I laugh today about how I thought he was a weirdo when I first knew him. In reality, I was competing with myself during those years because Nick was, and continues to be, such a kind and generous friend, helping me in more ways than I know he even recognizes.
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| Head Waiter...and his assistant...in Hello Dolly |
My junior year I was a bit miffed when The Weirdo got "head waiter" and I got "assistant head-waiter" in Hello Dolly, and his part in the dinner theater was slightly better than mine but these were easily justified away. "I'm glad I don't have to have the part where I have an accent." "I wanted the fun-loving part instead of the romantic guy anyway." You know, that kind of stuff. At the end of our Junior year it was announced that the main-stage musical being done the next year was "The Scarlet Pimpernel."
Everything was primed. I was going to be a senior, and the title role of the musical was a male character. I was charged and ready to fight for that title role, but I also had a safety net: there was a villain lead that was male as well. (By now, The Weirdo had been upgraded to...lets say...quirky frenemy) So if Quirky Frenemy came with his A-game, I'd be disappointed but not totally desolated. Everyone loves an amazing villain, right?
 |
| I may or may not have practiced this pose in the mirror. |
The time for auditions had arrived. I put on my specially bought outfit for the occasion (classy charcoal gray pants, and a maroon turtle-neck sweater...doesn't that just scream "artsy person in the early 2000s?"). I sang through my song, performed my monologue, and was requested to come to call-backs. Some time later I joined the 30 or so other kids on the stage for the call-backs.
Call-backs were a tumultuous mix of excitement and anxiety. We were all asked to read different parts and sing different excerpts from the show. After awhile, the group of 30 was narrowed down to 15, then more reading and singing. Eventually it was shaved down to 10, and it was slowly becoming clearer who the director was thinking of for which parts. Its funny, but I actually remember everyone that was left when it was narrowed down to 6. There were 3 boys and 3 girls being evaluated for the 2 male and 1 female leads. The moment of truth came when he told the girls to leave and we were left with just the three of us boys. My nerves were increasing...they were clearly having a difficult time with this decision, and in the end, one of us would not be getting a lead. I was prepared to be up against Quirky McFrenemy, but this third guy was unexpected! After yet more singing and reading the three of us started to get prepared to leave when the director started giving the speech about when the cast list would be posted. I was shocked when after his speech, he told the other two to go, and asked me to stay!
He had me sing through songs for both the Pimpernel and the villain, and then read through some lines for both characters as well. Whatever nerves I had before about not getting one of the two main parts slowly started to fade away. Clearly they LOVED everything about me and were just so torn on which of the two parts would feature my very best qualities! I went home that afternoon nervous, but pretty much sure that I had locked in a lead role.
It was later than night that they posted the cast list. I was there about 20 minutes before they said they were going to post it...but I had to be sneaky because I knew that they weren't going to post it with people waiting there. So me and my two friends (who, fun fact, are now my wife and my brother-in-law) smartly waited in the bushes next to the door. The second the list was posted I sprung out of the bushes and feverishly started scanning from the top:
Percy (The Scarlet Pimpernel).....................Nick Balaich
Marguerite....................................................Meghan Stettler
Chauvelin (the villain)..................................Brad Anderson
Armand........................................................Blaine Hickman
Wait...wait a second....what?
Something had to be wrong. Panicked, I looked at my friends, then frantically back at the list. My eyes starting to well up with tears, my heart beating faster and faster. The list went on from there of course, but I looked again and again at those top 4 names. The tears had gone from welling to falling and my panic was no longer being held inside. I could feel an audible cry ready to come out and I had to get out of there. With my two friends trailing behind me, I ran to the car, got in, closed the door, and cried so hard and intensely that my friends later told me that they couldn't tell if I was crying or laughing like a crazed lunatic.
You would think that a kid with all of the confusion and frustration I had felt spiritually up to this point in my life that I would have had lots of reasons to feel a little angry at God (please see previous posts for wondrous tales of sexual orientation shenanigans), but I actually didn't really ever experience that...until now. I. Was. Pissed. I remember that night actually punching my bed while scream-whispering a prayer, "HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN?! WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?!" (and the academy award for most seriously angsty and dramatic teen goes to...). I didn't sleep at all and after awhile, my pillow wet from constantly streaming tears, I decided to just get up and go for a walk alone to nowhere (you know, just for that extra dramatic flare).
Wow. Telling that story took a really long time. And I'm sure you're probably wondering at what point I might actually get to the reason for telling this story. Well, lets get to it...and jump ahead several months.
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| "Don't go to Paris Armand! Or do go...who cares?!" |
I was doing...ok. But I was constantly being torn apart inside by a demon I hadn't yet identified, but that had plagued me through the whole process. A demon that I never really put a name to, but had been my constant companion all through elementary school and junior high. A demon that, I'm sad to say, continues to haunt me on an annoyingly regular basis.
The demon? Compare-inator!...No...that sounds dumb, how about, Sir Compares-a-lot!...no, that sounds like a Care Bear...Compare-a-... Whatever, I can't think of a cool name for it...Comparison, I compared myself constantly everyday, that's the demon I'm talking about.
I was in an eternal tennis match of "Seriously, they picked him over me?!" and "I suck so bad, of course they picked him!" One minute I'd be feeling so smug, "I bet Mr. Ferrin is sooo regretting this decision." Then minutes later, "I'm so girly and chubby, look at them, they look amazing." As rehearsals continued and the opening night got closer, the smug and pompous comparisons were dying down to a murmur and the self-deprecating ones pretty much took over and ran the show. This was especially true because the rehearsal process gave me the opportunity to spend a lot of time with and observing Nick and Brad, and I was liking them as people more and more and wanted to be better friends with them. As time drew on, I slowly began to see myself as unable to measure up in any way. This is the state of comparison that I was most used to. It is actually surprising to myself, even now, that there was a significant length of time in which I saw myself as on the winning end of a comparison because my life was full of comparing myself, especially to other boys, and coming up short. That's not to suggest, however, that being on the winning end of comparisons about this was pleasant, because it wasn't. I was just as miserable with that.
It was about this time that we had a Seminary lesson about Ezra Taft Benson's conference talk on Pride. We were given a copy of the talk and went over it as a class, talking about various parts of it and why the concepts and ideas were important. There was SO much about that talk that was applicable to me at that time, but there was one line that hit me so hard, I read it over and over again. He said:
Pride is ugly. It says, "If you succeed, I'm a failure."
What a miserable way to live. Always so concerned about where you rank compared with others. If the statement "if you succeed, I'm a failure" is true, then there is no feeling at peace at all. If that is true then I can't be happy for anyone doing well, because I will automatically equate their doing well as me having failed somehow. Even if it was reversed: "if you fail, I succeed" is seeing life as a competition in which my goal is to see others fail, and my success is just some kind of bonus. That isn't happy either.
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| Nick and me as adults in Mexico |
And lets be honest...It is still extremely challenging in many ways.
Over the years I have improved my confidence (the real confidence, the kind that sees my worth and value being unchanged or hindered by someone else doing well) in some pretty profound ways in my life. I no longer walk into a group of men and immediately feel like a loser. I feel like I'm a good friend for the most part, and its not too hard to just be glad when I see my friends and family accomplishing great things in their personal, professional, and spiritual lives. But, if I'm honest, that old demon, Compare-i-tron (yeah, that doesn't work either), comes back far too often when say, I'm at the gym and he tells me that I'm a fat slob compared to the David statues walking around everywhere Or when I'm sitting in church and everyone is moving in and out of leadership positions, and I'm over here like, "for the love of Pete, will you men just come to choir practice for the Christmas program already?! Its been 4 years!" (note to anyone in my ward that might read this...this should not indicate to anyone that I'm dying to be in a leadership position, on the contrary I'm glad to have my low key calling, I say this strictly to illustrate the whole issue of Comparinor the Terrible).
The point is, over the years comparing myself to others has robbed me of being happy in otherwise completely satisfactory situations, and I'm tired of it.
I want to change, and I know that the first step in changing is stepping out of hiding places. To stop using other people's success as a hiding place for my insecurities to fester and grow. I have to own the demon of comparison as my responsibility to change, and to start recognizing when it is engaging with me. When I hear and recognize its whispering I have to stop, calmly face it, and say "no thanks. I appreciate what you are trying to do, you're trying to make sense of this situation, but I've learned by now that you don't really know what you are talking about," and then make a deliberate decision to be satisfied with my efforts and value.
I know that just like every other demon that exists in my life, if I just calmly stop feeding it what it wants, it eventually gets bored and walks away.
*Disclaimer*
Please note that the previously mentioned story is the emotional account of a 16 year old. My account of the situation might have painted a picture of Mr. Ferrin that makes him seem like a jerk or something but let me assure you, he is not. He was SO gracious and good to me that year. In fact, if any of you have known me long enough to remember having seen The Scarlet Pimpernel, you might remember that Armand kept showing up in strange places and singing lines of songs that were not his to sing. Mr. Ferrin and the production staff gave my character lines and songs that weren't written in the script. I'm sure that was because he recognized my dismay and did what he could to help my poor fragile ego. Later in the year single cast me as the only one single cast in a show where the other parts were triple cast! He really was and is a wonderful guy and I'm so happy to occasionally get to still have association with him.
Also, Nick and Brad have become a couple of the most important friendships of my life. Brad is such a truly good and talented person and Nick and I laugh today about how I thought he was a weirdo when I first knew him. In reality, I was competing with myself during those years because Nick was, and continues to be, such a kind and generous friend, helping me in more ways than I know he even recognizes.
