Journal Entry 8: Not your mama's belief system.

I think a big part of growing up for everybody is realizing the things that have been sort of imprinted on you as far as your beliefs and customs and asking “Why?” and deciding what you’re gonna keep and what you're gonna throw out. It’s kind of like cleaning out your closet. You know that dress really worked for you 4 years ago when you wore it to your cousin’s wedding, but it’s not 2011 anymore and it just doesn’t fit you the way it used to. I think it’s hard for us to understand why some people believe the things that they believe. I think some people take more from their upbringing than others. Some people do a complete 180 and don’t want anything to do with their pasts and their families and some people stay in one place all their lives and believe everything their parents told them to. I think both of these can be unhealthy to a degree. I’ve definitely made my own decisions about what I believe and stand by, or maybe more so what I don’t believe in. I think people are scared to question and wonder and scared to have those hard conversations. Often times (and I especially notice this with my mom and people of her generation) I will ask her why she believes something, and her response is something like, “That’s just what I believe.” There’s no real explanation or reasoning. I think in my mind at least there’s a pattern in people of my mother’s generation (the whole fear of God generation) especially living in the south, where they just accepted everything their parents told them about race and religion and sex and never asked “why?” or “why not?”. I think as artists we have a responsibility to ask “why?” Especially as an actor, I might be asked to be play someone with beliefs completely opposite of my own. I need to then, as an actor, be able to look at that character without judgement and try to find something in their belief system that I identify with or a reason why they believe what they believe. I’ve gotten to a certain point with some things that I just know to avoid talking about them to my mom. Religion and LGBT rights are two topics that I know mom and I will just have to agree to disagree on. The difference is, I feel like I’ve thought about “both sides” of the situation and have chosen the most ethically sound option where as I feel like my mom just chooses whichever side has been planted in her head is correct. Maybe this thinking isn’t fair to her, but that’s just how I see it sometimes. I feel lucky and grateful to have escaped the “regurgitating of parents exact beliefs” syndrome that seems to be especially prevalent in the ultra conservative south. There’s a certain life model that is the “norm” I guess for most of the people where I’m from and that is, “Grow up, graduate college, find another white, straight, catholic person to marry, have children and a job, and take care of your parents when they get older (all of which you do in the same 30 mile radius” I feel like as someone who is consciously breaking some of these life pattern norms it is very important for me to form strong opinions about religious, political, and social issues and not just believe them but be able to back them up and have civl grown up conversations with anyone who wishes to talk to me about these issues.