Doubt Kills

I hope to wrap the new video today. This one has been an interesting combination of flow and something like what a salmon swimming upstream might feel when encountering a dam. The imagery of white water in violent confrontation with rocks, boulders, downed trees, bends, ells and substantial drops in elevation is the flow. The same water, further downstream, as it meets a temporarily immovable object, comes to an abrupt halt and backs-up, stagnating in a pool that quickly collects a layer of proverbial pond scum. Same water, less flow. 

The metaphor of fluidity, specifically in this case in reference to a creative project, one with a deadline of less than a week, is typical of what I suspect is a common dilemma of people trying to juggle the fine balance between ‘getting it done’ and ‘enjoying the ride.’  As one is a job and the other a process. With most jobs there is a quota involved, a results oriented target under which the employee toils, constantly fearful of the circumstance that might result in failure. The other is timeless, free and unobstructed, the only pressure being the challenge to keep it so. 

Somewhere between the free flowing creative imperative and the modern necessity of gainful employment, is our pool of water. In the perfect world we all once imagined for ourselves both elements would create our reality. 

This almost never happens. 

We get sidetracked, burdened with debt, distracted, exploited, abused and manipulated. We go to work and never come back. We get lost in a forest of consumerism taking the paths illuminated by shiny objects instead of the ones backlit by virtue. We doubt our very spirit and sell out to the quid pro quo of a weekly paycheck and a big screen TV. 

In our Sunday movie last week we watched, as we cycled indoors, a very typical Hollywood take on ‘the affected ex-Black Ops operative trying to maintain cover in a corrupt world.”  Variations on this theme have been done a thousand times, sometimes with impressive results. Action, suspense, violence, drama, gore, good vs evil and a happy ending forecasting another episode is about it. With in this case one exception. There is always the exception. 

The male affected ex-Black Ops/CIA protagonist is also a teacher. He befriends his co-worker at the local hardware store, his cover, as well as a young Russian call-girl with whom he soon finds himself protecting all the way to the top of the Russian mafia, as they put it, the head of the snake. At one point as the tension and drama stand atop the blood-stained moral escalator, his coworker/student, already a bit nervous about taking another nine millimeter shot, says that the mission he has been assigned, to run exposed to the breaker box and flip out the lights in exactly forty-seconds, is something that, given his limited experience and bleeding leg, he doubts he can do.

Our hero, without hesitation and in his command voice says, ‘doubt kills, go.’

And he does. 

And he saves the day.

And the story happily ends with the promise of a sequel.

And the water flows.