Day 6 (Day 1 of week 2) of Le Jeu at Gaulier.

I started today thinking about The Leap.

The Leap is something I talk about sometimes. It’s that moment when you say “fuck it” and you just go for it… whatever it is that you are going to go for.

(You know, part of me feels uncertain about swearing here. I know, I said from the start this blog is a place where I don’t censor myself. Because I do that so much in business, by necessity. And I do swear in “real life”. But still, part of me says swearing is not allowed because “Who might read this!?” except that I do swear in real life so why not?)

That aside about swearing, too, is a reflection on my mind today…

I’m second guessing myself a lot today.

Worrying. Wondering. Waiting for the right moment.

All of these things are the opposite of The Leap.

When you take The Leap, you just fucking do it. No thinking, just do it.

In class today, there was a definite feeling of a shift. That, now the first week has passed and we’ve gotten over the “culture shock” of the teaching approach, with its associated “insults” game… now we can start the work.

I read a quotation from a comedian about Gaulier that “when you can handle the insults, then the work can begin” and it feels like that is intentional. He layers on the “insults” game thick in the first few days.

And Philippe’s teaching changed today a little as well. It became a bit nicer. He gave more leeway to the acts on stage and allowed them a second chance when they asked for one.

The games we played today were:

• In movement: A ballroom dancing space where you and your partner are “always at the point of being about to dance but never actually dance.” And a line dance to a Shania Twain track.
• In Gaulier’s class: A game with 5 chairs (one in each corner and one in the middle). 2 of the people in the corners need to swap chairs with each other, without letting the middle person steal a chair. If they succeed, the person in the middle gets a point. The person in the middle “wins” if they get to 5 points.

And then we did a bunch of scenes.

I say “we” but I didn’t go up.

The premise of the scene was that one person was in their house. Their neighbour, who they’d be having a relationship with, knocked on the door. The person entering came in (with a bunch of flowers) in Major – this is a term for me to explain in another post – with a big character choice. The person in the room then had to play the opposite of that big character choice.

Why didn’t I go up to do a scene?

I wasn’t really feeling it. Well, at first. It took me about halfway through the class to feel like I could do the game.

What I needed was to take The Leap. To just go for it.

But I didn’t.

This is part of the dynamic here too. And perhaps part of the learning.

We are 35 students. A lot of people didn’t get to participate in this activity today. You still learn a lot (arguably more) when you are in the audience, but the experience is different when you don’t.

If you want to go on stage, you need to be bold. You need to get up and volunteer yourself.

Some people go up every time.

Others almost never.

If we want to be participants – and this applies to many aspects of life – we have to be bold and make big moves. That applies both to the exercises and to volunteering for activities.

This is challenging for me. Some days I have the energy to do it, some days I just don’t. Today was the latter.

The impact of my social anxiety means that I’m perhaps less likely to “just volunteer myself” on low energy days. My mental chatter of “People think I’m odd and unlikable. Nobody will want to do a scene with me. Nobody ever picks me.” is more potent when I’m not feeling fully “on the money.”

But The Leap is necessary.

And it’s necessary not just once. It’s necessary again and again and again.

Often, I take a Leap in life and then I have to give myself days, weeks, or months to recover (depending on the size of The Leap). But that can lose the momentum The Leap provides.

Even when you’re feeling low, or perhaps especially then, The Leap can be what’s necessary.

Having said that, I’m also okay about not having gotten up today. A lot of other people didn’t get the chance to get up either.

As the cliche says: this course is a marathon, not a sprint.