S/he had so much potential.

I want you to imagine yourself doing something you’ve always wanted to do, but you haven’t.

This could be play Frisbee golf, visit a foreign country, learn piano, plant a sapling. Anything.

I want you to picture yourself engaged in this activity, noticing your movements, your self, how you’re feeling, what energy you’re carrying.

Now, I want you to remove yourself, and in your stead, imagine your inner most power--the very greatest power you have thumping in your heart--doing that activity. See if you can sense or see or imagine the unmasked self, the soul part, your unharmed self engaged in your dream activity. Again, notice their movements, their feelings, what energy they carry.

Is it different?

Is there a difference between how you imagine yourself to engage in the world, and how, well, the world wants you to engage in it? Are you freer, larger, glowy? Are you lighter, uninhibited, unafraid?

Maybe, or not. Maybe you won’t do the above. But, this morning, I did. Just sort of made up the meditation, “thought exercise,” as I sat in my morning meditation, and I did see myself differently. I was envisioning today’s audition, envisioning myself onstage in the dress I’ve chosen, giving my monologue. And I felt the urge to see what would happen if it weren’t me, but the me that lives under all my cages. I will tell you, it was very different. The second one confident, unafraid to fill the space, to be big. Not hiding.

I’m going to try to remember that part of me, because it is always with me, when I go out into the world, and onto the stage today. That there is only a trap door of fear that prevents me from being her. And what if, for a few moments, I can pry it open, and let myself be and let you see what I’ve always wanted you to see: I am more than who I've been.

And greater than my obfuscation.