Every Day Is Election Day

You're the leader you should be voting for

What I was doing wasn’t safe and I knew it, which I’m sure accounted for most of its appeal to the nineteen-year-old me.

The iron frame and metal springs of the trampoline groaned under the weight of my descent as I pushed as hard as I could against the canvas webbing—catapulting myself back into weightless space as I attempted to go even higher.

My goal was to bounce high enough to blacken my fingers with the rafter dust that had long been accumulating on the steel scaffolding that supported the roof of the gym.

This was decidedly against the gym’s safety protocols, because I had no one spotting me and no safety harness. One wrong push, slightly off-center, and I would have launched myself off the tramp onto the concrete floor. Which is why I pursued this goal late at night when the gym was empty, using my instructor key to let myself in after hours and enjoy full freedom on the equipment.

I had just finished my second year of university at Webster Conservatory of Theater Arts, working toward my liberal arts degree with the aim of becoming a professional actor after graduation. I taught gymnastics over the summer to save up for the school year. But the entirety of my sophomore acting training was like trying to swallow raw broccoli without chewing. It wasn’t going down well. Everything about acting as a profession, the lack of control about how, when, or where I’d be able to work, the anxiety of auditions, the adoption of new characters when I didn’t yet know who I was felt wrong to me.

I spoke to my guidance counselor at the end of the year who generously offered to help me design my own major so I could focus on the aspects of the performing arts I most enjoyed. I was lucky to be attending a school that provided such flexibility and we modified my coursework to accommodate my needs for my junior year.

When I entered the gym all alone that day in August my plan was to return to school in a few weeks and start the new program. It appeared that I had chosen a new and better pathway that was all my own.

But when you start doing anything you love, even if it’s as basic as jumping on a trampoline, you get an immediate and crucial reference point by which to navigate. You remember what it’s like to be fully present in an activity, to gain energy rather than tire as you approach a goal, to have all your senses working together in a flow state. When you reclaim a connection to joy, it’s suddenly harder to maintain the charade of half-heartedness that seems to pervade so much of modern-day human activity.

Connecting to this state of inner freedom—just weeks before school was due to resume—triggered something I didn’t expect while hovering airborne.

As I sailed through space a voice arose in my mind that could only have been clearer if it had come through a loudspeaker. 

It said, “Quit school.”

The command almost caused me to lose my concentration and fly off the tramp into a wall. 

“What do you mean quit school?” I replied, challenging the voice back, as though I was in full opposition to the idea. Secretly, however, something inside of me was thrilled by the notion. It had the same mood of freedom as did flying through space.

The voice didn’t hesitate. 

Clearly and confidently it said, “If you go back to school you’re going to turn around at age fifty with a bewildered look on your face and wonder why you’re not happy, and where you took a wrong turn. This is the turn,” it announced.

I kept bouncing. Letting the words of this unexpected authority sink in.

My father was a sciences professor at the local university, and my mother had degrees in English and graduated with academic success, going on to teach, work as a librarian, and edit books. Higher education was part of my family’s DNA. At first blush, a customized major looked like a vote for my educational independence. Now I had free choice. I could continue with the old program, or pursue the custom path.

But some part of me had just introduced a third option. That voice, of course, was my own inner guidance. It was the dawning of personal leadership, an instinctual navigation system we all have by virtue of being an evolving human.

When that personal leadership is activated, we become intelligently suspicious of binary choices. We understand that binary choices often represent two forms of wrongful imprisonment rather than freedom. 

I knew I could easily ignore this third option being offered to me. I could double-down on the conventional path of school and perhaps leave that voice behind in the dust, its authority fading into the distance. But I could also feel that this voice had energy, certainty, faith, and power.

I decided to follow it.

I told my parents I was leaving school. I was never lectured or criticized when my parents had doubts about my choices. But I knew when they were concerned by the depth of their silence. The furrowed brow of my mother, the hard blinks of my dad—these were the telltale signs of their care. Finally they probed a bit out loud. 

What would I do instead? What were my career plans?

Their questions were hardly satisfied by the answer, “I don’t know,” but I was sufficiently infused with the clarity and the confidence of the voice that both my parents came alongside and supported my decision.

In addition to teaching gymnastics over the summer I was working as a birthday party clown. I started advertising more intentionally and booking more shows. I moved into my own apartment, began practicing my circus skills in earnest, and faced my loneliness and the uncertainty of my direction. 

Six months later I got a call from a close high school friend who through a series of serendipitous events had landed a role in the touring company of a new Broadway production. My friend managed to arrange a private audition for me with the director for an open part. The role in question required someone who could not only act, sing, and dance, but who was also competent in circus skills, which I had just spent six months practicing.

It took me two days to sell my car, cancel all my clown jobs, get rid of my belongings, sublet my apartment, prepare an audition song, buy a one-way plane ticket and fly to the theater district in Manhattan on the off-chance I’d actually land the role. 

I did.

Obeying my inner leader had set me up to respond to the audition invitation. It was also a dry run for trusting my instincts, with no guarantees of what might come next. Instead of being lashed to a classical acting program for the ostensible purpose of performing professionally one day, I suddenly found myself in New York city having earned an actor’s equity card, which was like getting one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets in the back of a chocolate bar.

When it comes to personal leadership, it’s often essential to look beyond the conventional binary alternatives, expand our view, and choose a way forward that acknowledges the unique needs of our spirit in a particular place and time.

Every day is election day. If we’re paying attention, we have the opportunity to exercise far more authority and influence over our future than we’re willing to admit. Third options abound.

If you can’t decide between two types of food, you might need to fast.

If you can’t choose which side of town you should live on, perhaps you need to leave the city. 

And if you’re feeling anxious about who’s going to wind up in power after this presidential election—maybe you need to vote for yourself.

I learned then that even when I felt powerless to control my job or education — or anything else that seemed out of my hands — I always had control over my own mind and how I treated others. Even when I had nothing else, I could still be kind, just, generous, honest, loving and compassionate.

~ Susan Fowler