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Jul 14, 2023

Living by loving

It is often considered pejorative to call someone an amateur. We are as confused

It is often considered pejorative to call someone an amateur. We are as confused about this as we are about the meaning of "leisure" (to be in command of one's own time, which is not the same thing as being idle).

To be "amateurish" is thought to be unskilled, crude, not like a professional. The professional is genuine and the amateur is a dabbler or, worse, a pretender. This risks missing something vital.

The Latin root of the word means one who loves, amatorem becoming amateur in French. An amateur may do something well or poorly, and they may be paid or not, but they are doing it because they want to and they love it. (Leisure!)

This came up when a 17-year-old recently asked me whether he should continue acting in the theater or "be a bit more realistic." The parameters of that question scratched me to the heart. Realistic about what, exactly? I wondered. He was either unsure or embarrassed to talk about making a living.

There is a pernicious idea in American culture that if you’re not making money from something or doing it as your profession, you’re wasting time. Moreover, if you are good at something but not "monetizing" it, you are a sucker. The cardinal virtue, after basic needs are met, is economic fitness.

Permit me to blaspheme: If you enjoy something, feel there are things to learn or experience through it, people you want to meet — or whatever you get from doing it and sharing that with others — then please, keep doing it. Perfect it.

"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living," wrote Thoreau. "All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planning-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving."

Through the decades that acting was the core of my life, I worked in the professional theater and, before and after that, in amateur theater. If one wants to pursue acting as a profession, it is a difficult path but there are things one can do to help make that happen. Success is possible but not guaranteed, especially as long as you let the prejudices of other people define success for you.

Do things you love, wherever you can. Do not lose this glorious morning.

Desert Sage first appeared in the Deming Headlight in 2001, authored by Win Mott. Algernon D’Ammassa has authored the column since 2014.