For one with the courage to go to the very edge of his own comfort zone, the reward is nothing less then coming to the awesome, terrible beauty of his authentic, core emotional self. From the time we are babies we are emotional. Human emotion is a "terrible beauty," to borrow from poet W. Yeats; each complex emotion we have, shifting like quicksilver in time, has a Terrible Beauty. "Beauty" because emotion gives us so much information, because it is always growing and changing...as is human life. "Terrible" because emotion is so profoundly powerful. We are wonderfully, terribly emotional human beings. The emotional center of the brain---the Limbic---is the oldest, most primitive, in a sense most center-place of the mind...smells/olfactory memory, and emotional memory reside there. We go to that place, that center-place. A wise woman once exhorted me to seek out what others were NOT Doing, places where others were NOT Going.... "Go to the edge of things," she said to me. "What others cannot do or will not do---do that; where others cannot or will not go---go there. Whatever that is, wherever it is...bring your gifts and DO THAT, GO THERE... Go to the Edge of things! Find out what is uniquely YOURS to do. "
Go to the edge...you'll get to the center...of YOU: and you will see yourself anew, as if for the first time, and know yourself; a Terrible Beauty will be born. [And you'll be a much better actor, too.]
-Pat
