Journey or Mission?

When I lived in New York, my friend Dave and I would go on these adventures around the city. Sometimes it was just for a walk, but you never know what can happen on the streets in that town. It was one of my favorite things to do.

Before we left his apartment, we would set our intention clearly: mission or journey? A mission means we have somewhere to get to, something to accomplish: We will get one of those sesame chocolates from Kee before it closes. Or, we have all these errands to run, but we're getting to the MoMA today.

Missions were always pretty fun. It was like a video game: we moved the avatars of ourselves throughout the city, picking up extra lives (coffee) and finagling roadblocks (re-routed subways, street fairs, camels inexplicably in the middle of Manhattan) to get to the goal.


But journeys were even better. A journey meant we were clear that there was no goal, no end point. Instead, we'd just get on a path and see where it took us. That's when we would end up places we hadn't been before. That's when the iPod splitter came in handy. That's when we ended up on the ferry to Staten Island, only to come right back again; or actually stopped to watch the street performers in Washington Square Park and heard an acoustic version of Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy' from two talented dudes who quite clearly were.

I was thinking about mission versus journey in my practice yesterday, and in the class I taught last night. If you see a challenging pose as a mission, it's usually over as soon as you get into it. The path ends when the mission is accomplished -- and you fall out.

Missions can be stressful, especially when we get close to accomplishing them. Even when it's not ours -- it might be Harrison Ford's mission -- we hold our breaths and clench our teeth or squeeze our eyes shut when he almost gets to that Ark. It's very ingrained.

I still hold my breath sometimes kicking up into handstand -- which is probably why I can't balance there for more than a few seconds. But when I think of handstand as a journey, somehow it stretches out, getting fuller and deeper and longer.

It's the same in improv. No one wants to see your effort. If you're trying to make us laugh, we don't want to. We want to see you on a journey -- and we know you're on one when you're making yourself laugh too, even if we can only see it in your eyes. It's he difference between inventing and discovering. And for me, that's the great joy of improvising.

But like handstand, I can't always find it onstage. And I often lose it as soon as I'm there -- falling out of the moment with breath tightly held. But maybe the falling -- those failed missions -- are part of the journey too.

I'm heading back to New York in a couple weeks. It's the first time I've been back since moving away nearly a year ago. I'm sure there will be more journeys -- and more missions. And though the lesson first occurred to me there, I know I don't need a city that large or unpredictable to keep teaching me the difference. I don't need a yoga mat or an audience either. I suppose all I really need is breath.

But it sure is fun to switch up the arena.