“What do you want to do when you grow up,” I asked my daughter. Before she answers, a quiet mischievous voice inside me says, “Write a screenplay?” Where did that come from? She doesn’t want to write a screenplay. She doesn’t even know what one is. My daughter goes on to list every animal related occupation she knows - zookeeper, the person in charge of the Humane Society, the person who finds a way to get all the people to stop eating animals.... She does makes an excellent point when she puts it that way. Nowhere in her six year old mind, is there a desire to write a screenplay.
Oh...that must be my aspiration. Couldn’t she just live out this one dream for me? She’ll be brilliant! I can sit back, relax and not have to do all the work or worse, risk failure. A sincere thank you for her dad and me at the Oscars will be sufficient. As I sit there, behind Francis Ford Coppola and in front of Woody Allen, I can quietly know that her accomplishments are ...well...all about me.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve projected onto my daughter. Like all parents, I've projected at least some of my own insecurities. If they weren’t so deeply unconscious, I'd list them here. But NEVER …EVER have I projected my ambitions. That is so child beauty pageant.. ish.
I really thought I was only projecting my dreams onto other adults – who can take it, or better yet, ignore me. “You are SO good with color and shapes! You really should take up some kind of art.” I told my husband. Five years later, I was putting shapes and colors together and making collages. “You are a great story teller – you’re a writer. Why aren’t you writing,” I asked a friend. I couldn’t help be a little irritated when she wasn’t as enthusiastic about her dream as I was. That was before I started writing on this website.
But the only alternative to irritating those adults around me, tricking my daughter out of her own life or worse, have her win an animal rights activist award and not thank me, is to face the terribly bothersome thought: “Writing Screenplays??! You’ve got to be kidding!! You have no experience. How does that help you find an income…If you really want to work for free while having people laugh at you, why not just shoot for stand up comedian?” Hmmm....When you put it that way, being laughed at sounds pretty amazing. Then….an image starts to form. There's my daughter on stage…..instead of receiving an Oscar, she’s the comedic host of the Oscars. That's it ! But wait... What is she saying? She was supposed to open with that hilarious joke - the one we rehearsed over and over and over again....but instead, she’s asking the audience, …“Have you heard the one about the Dalmatian and the Yellow Lab?”
For Part One of "The Fine Art of Projection" please follow this link.