I Don’t Believe In Circumstances
In George Bernard Shaw’s play Mrs. Warren’s Profession, there’s a scene in which Mrs. Warren bitterly reflects on her past, insisting she’d been trapped by her circumstances and denied any real choices throughout her life. “Everybody has some choice, mother,” her daughter Vivie replies. “The poorest girl alive may not be able to choose between being Queen of England or Principal of Newnham; but she can choose between ragpicking and flowerselling, according to her taste. People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”
Getting up and looking for or making the circumstances one wants—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
Getting To A Place Where It’s Undeniable
After talking to the University of Alabama football team, Kobe Bryant and then Alabama head coach Nick Saban spoke one-on-one. “I thought it was great what you said about patience,” Saban told Kobe. “That you have to be impatient, but you can’t get frustrated.” Saban was referencing something Kobe had told the team: for his first two years in the NBA, Kobe wasn’t getting much playing time. During that time, along with working to get better, Kobe worked to tune out his family and friends. “They were in my ear,” Kobe explained, “saying things like, ‘Oh, you should be starting.’ ‘Oh, you should be playing more.’ ‘Oh, the coaches don’t know what they’re doing.’” Often when the circumstances aren’t what you want, Kobe continued, “there’s a lot of noise, a lot of outside noise from family and friends and former coaches, filling your head with nonsense.” They fill your head with tempting reasons to “get frustrated and complain and whine.” “You have to have strength,” Kobe said, “to be able to edit that and say, ‘No, shut up, I don’t want to hear it, this is on me…If I’m not playing, I need to get better at this, I need to get better at that.’” “You were taking responsibility for your own self-determination [and circumstances],” Coach Saban added. “Yeah,” Kobe replied. “For me, it was the challenge of getting to a place where it’s undeniable—you have to play me because I’m that good, I’m that efficient, I’m that strong at both ends of the floor.”
The Tragic Immobility Of The Young Girl’s Existence
When she was a teenager, Marie Curie began thinking about pursuing a career as a scientist. But from a poor family in Russia-controlled Poland, the necessary education was beyond her parents’ financial means. So she got up and looked for ways to make the circumstances she wanted. After considering her limited options, Marie struck a deal with her older sister Bronya: Marie would get a job as a governess, using her wages to help Bronya pay for medical school in Paris, on the condition that once Bronya became a doctor, she would in turn help pay for Marie’s education. Beginning in January 1886, Marie worked for a wealthy family in the rural countryside, sixty miles north of her home in Warsaw. She looked after and tutored the family’s children during the day, and in the evenings, she prepared for entrance exams to the Sorbonne, the prestigious university she dreamed of attending. At a time when women were largely excluded from higher education and faced systemic barriers to gaining admission to institutions like the Sorbonne, the challenge was getting to a place where her application was undeniable. “It was indeed an all-powerful instinct,” Marie’s daughter Eve Curie writes in Madame Curie: A Biography, “that made her sit every night at her desk, reading volumes of sociology and physics borrowed from the library, or perfecting her knowledge of mathematics by correspondence with her father…All alone in that country house, she was without direction or advice. She felt her way, almost by sheer chance, through the mazes of the knowledge she wanted to acquire.” After five long, lonely years working as a governess, true to their pact, Bronya became a doctor in Paris and was at last able to fund Marie’s travel, exams, and the next steps toward the circumstances she wanted. “By small imperceptible stages,” Eve writes, “the tragic immobility of the young girl’s existence was beginning to stir.” Despite studying independently without formal instruction, in 1891, Marie received a letter from the admissions offices: “Faculty of Sciences—First Quarter Courses will begin at the Sorbonne on November 3, 1891.” “From that moment,” Eve writes, “Marie’s fortune, starting from zero, began to increase.” She would be one of a small number of women to earn a degree from the Sorbonne, graduating at the top of her class in physics and mathematics, before becoming the first woman in France to earn a PhD in physics—and later, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
Make What’s Missing
Before Lin-Manuel Miranda created award-winning musicals, he was a substitute teacher in New York City. From an early age, Miranda’s dream was to star in Broadway musicals. In college, he studied the musical theater canon, looking for potential acting roles. “For Latinos, in the musical theater canon, it’s slim pickings,” he explained. “We have West Side Story, Zoot Suit, and we have a couple of parts in A Chorus Line—that’s it.” Instead of seeing that gap in the canon as unfair, an obstacle, a good reason to not pursue a career in musical theater—Lin-Manuel saw it as an opportunity, a gap to be filled. “I decided to make what I saw was missing,” he said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but that’s the best advice you could give anyone: make what’s missing.” So, he continues, “I wrote a musical full of scenes where people are rapping outside of bodegas [and] doing the stuff that me and my Latino friends used to do.” He set his musical in a majority-Latino neighborhood (Washington Heights) near where he grew up, he filled it a majority-Latino cast, and he titled it, In The Heights. He wrote it over the course of 5 years—mostly on nights and weekends—while “I was a ‘whichever teacher is sick’ substitute teacher.” And on March 9, 2008, In The Heights premiered on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. That same year, it won a Grammy (Best Musical Show Album) and four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. As a result of making what was missing, Lin-Manuel said, “I went from broke substitute teacher to [award-winning] Broadway composer.”
I’ve Wasted My Life Hanging Out With A Bunch Of Guys Just Like You
At 17, Quentin Tarantino moved to LA with ambitions of being a filmmaker. He got a job at a video store, Video Archives, and, he said, “I got caught up in the little life there…and for a few years, it put my ambitions to sleep. Because I was happy enough.” Then one night, an older coworker named Steve-O vented about how disgusted he was with his life. “He starts ranting,” Tarantino recalled. “He goes, ‘You know Quentin…at 20, I worked at South Bay Cinemas, and I hung out with a bunch of guys just like you…Then I worked at Miller’s Outpost for 4 years, and I hung out with a bunch of guys just like you. Then I worked at Licorice Pizza for 4 years with a bunch of guys just like you. I’ve wasted my life hanging out with a bunch of guys just like you.” Tarantino was about to turn 25 at this time and had been “starting to have my own little, ‘Okay, well, what have I done with my life so far? So far fucking nothing.’ So I’m having my own little anxiety, hitting 25, but I’m seeing what it’s like when you’re in your 30s and you’re in this situation.” Not wanting to be in that situation in his 30s—that night, after Steve-O’s rant, Tarantino had what he called his “Quentin Detest Fest”—“I stayed up all night long looking at everything that I’m fucking up in my life, everything that I’m doing wrong. Not giving myself any fucking excuses, laying out everything I’m doing wrong. And then I spent the last two hours figuring out how I can change it…And as opposed to just doing it and going to get some sleep and then you forget about it and fall back into your routine, I decided to change my life.” He got up and looked for better circumstances, moving to a cheap apartment in Koreatown, closer to Hollywood. Soon after, “I met a guy who wrote low-budget horror movies. Through him, I met other writers…You meet one person, and they introduce you to three others. Now all of a sudden, I actually knew people who were making movies.” In the mix, surrounded by people actually making movies, Tarantino began writing his own scripts and helping other writers with theirs. Soon, when those writers would get asked to do rewrites on projects, if they couldn’t take the job, they’d recommend Quentin. “And within a year and a half from moving out of the South Bay and moving into the Hollywood area,” Tarantino said, “literally, within a year and a half, I was able to make a living as a writer.” Within a year and a half, he was able to make the circumstances he wanted.
You Are Traffic. You Are The World. You Are Your Circumstances.
Shortly after starting a creative production company, Donald Glover was asked about why he did it. “I got bored with people saying, like, ‘This world is shit,’” Glover said. “It’s kind of like when people say, ‘Oh, this traffic is so bad.’ I’m like, ‘You are traffic.’ You can’t sit there and be like, ‘Oh man, the traffic was horrible.’ … You are traffic. You’re in it. Without you, there would be no traffic. So if you’re sitting here being like, ‘The world is shit,’ it’s like, you are the world. You have to take that responsibility. So I focused on making sure that everything I’m making is shit that I wish was in the world.” Don’t blame circumstances for what they are. You are your circumstances. Get up and look for circumstances you want, and, if you can’t find them, make them.