This Is Tiffany’s

When I was twenty-five, I moved out of my parents’ house. Since then, I’ve been living out of a suitcase without a home, furniture, or even a nameless cat. But there is a quiet, proud place where I can escape when the Mean Reds threaten. It’s not a physical place like Tiffany’s; it’s a dream. A dream of who I will be once I make it as an artist. 

I won’t have to think about money or worry about the state of my savings. I won’t have to spend forty hours a week at a job just to get by. I will spend time with my heroes in late night jam sessions, tango with Angelina Jolie, and drink red wine with Leonardo DiCaprio. I will be able to impact the world and people will be excited when I walk in the room. Those who know me will be proud to know me. Maybe I’ll even be happy.

Until then, I slog through the swamp trying to endure and live long enough to get there. My face is growing older and more tired when I look in the mirror, but one day all I have in me to offer will be seen and appreciated for what it is. This will be my salvation.

I’ve tried to make it as an artist for years. I’ve seen others who are better than I, who have been trying longer, and who are shrouded in the same anonymity. There are also those who have not been working as long who stumbled into it. They write best-selling books, win Oscars, and dodge the paparazzi while millions like me get rejected from local magazines and Central Casting. 

As children, we’re told we can do anything if we believe in ourselves and chase our dreams. But one doesn’t have to travel around the block too many times to realize the race is not always to the swift. We can influence our destiny, but we can not create it, no matter how much passion, energy, and beauty we may possess. It is a terribly painful and discouraging thing to realize that despite our best efforts, the life we desperately want may allude us.

I know someone who is an outstanding actress, who lives and breathes The Method, who has worked for years to break into the business, only to be is told she won’t get the part because she’s not pretty enough. My heart breaks for her. It breaks for me. 

But even if we could achieve our destiny through force of will, it wouldn’t bring deeper fulfillment or purpose. How many people get everything they ever wanted only to realize it wasn’t what they wanted? Grammy winners have said they feel emptier than when they were playing bars and karaoke nights. When will we learn to believe them? If I’m not satisfied and fulfilled now, I won’t magically become so once I’ve made it. We chase success, money, and fame, thinking they will bring contentment, fulfillment, and purpose. But external circumstances never do.

I am not where I want to be in life, but there is a bitter truth that I am where God wants me to be. I am at whatever level I am because this is where He put me. My job is not to get to where I want to be, but to be faithful with where I am. Faithful with little. 

This brings its own form of contentment that will carry on at whatever level we find ourselves, whether receiving applause on Broadway or community theater. The prize is not the level of success we attain – the prize is the process. The results are in God’s hands.

He raises up kings and brings them down, and He has His own mysterious ways for why Audrey Hepburn made it and why I haven’t. I lose my way and become disheartened when I focus on the dream of where I want to be in contrast to the swamp in which I live. We will never be completely whole or find happily ever after here, because this world was not meant to be the end of our story. There will always be a gap between who we are and who we want to be – what we do and what we want to do. The trick is to live in this tension. To be content with where we are, dissatisfied enough to grow, and free from any illusions that the future will save us.

I still want to make it as an artist, but I know I can not create my destiny and no external circumstances will bring deeper fulfillment. My job is to embrace where God has me and be faithful in it, knowing He will use this to accomplish whatever His plan is. God wants me here, and if I understood how good He is and how much He loves me, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. This is Tiffany’s.

J.

Aug. 3, 2021