He would go insane could he not liberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himself in some form with men, with the world outside.*
(Erich Fromm)

Maybe the most important thing you can train an aspiring improviser to do, [Charlie Todd] says, is listen and observe and stay fully open to the possibilities in whatever his or her fellow actors might be saying or doing.**
(Rob Walker)

I may be an introvert, but I know I need others to become my True Self, to be fully alive.

We all prefer different ways to connect to people. For me, connections need to be deep, so I prefer one-to-ones and small group immersions.

David Brooks shares an experience of transcendence from a journey to work with thousands of others that feels like the sun rising on a grey day:

Suddenly it seemed like the most vivid part of reality was this: Souls waking up in the morning. Souls riding the train to work. Souls yearning for goodness. Souls wounded by earlier traumas. Souls in each and every person, illuminating them from inside, haunting them, and occasionally enraptured within them, souls alive or numb in them; and with that cam a feeling that I was connected by radio waves to all of them – some underlying soul of which we were all a piece.^

When we notice people, really notice them, then we find more of ourselves.

We also find find hope for what we can be about together, especially when we can leave our scripts behind and begin to improvise – the kind of scripts that tell us people like us don’t mix with people like them, whether because of beliefs, age, gender or ethnicity.

(*From Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving.)
(**From Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing.)
(^From David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.)