Under bus thrown

When I contemplate taking on a challenge, I contemplate John Goodman. And I barely ever think about acting or actors — with good cause, I would argue. If you watch interviews with actors, you know all too well how thickly they tend to surface their lives with the badigeon of unconvincing platitude. I don't know if Goodman's that way, but I do know that, when he contemplated taking on Beckett — a man about whom I know more than about any living actor, and I'm no Beckett scholar — he said something I've come to find Important Indeed.

I first read about Goodman's pre-Waiting for Godot soul-searching in a book or a blog post — probably one by Seth Godin, in either case — but it's well covered in this NYT story:

Mr. Goodman hadn’t acted onstage since 2005, when he was Big Daddy in an acclaimed Los Angeles production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and he was initially reluctant to appear in this “Godot.” “I was frightened,” he said. “And I wanted to spend my daughter’s last semester of high school with her, whether she wanted it or not.”

When he is not working, Mr. Goodman lives with his wife, Annabeth Hartzog, and daughter, Molly, in New Orleans, where he moved from Los Angeles a dozen years ago because he was fed up with what he called “collateral tabloid damage.” He dreamed of just fishing and watching “SpongeBob,” he said, until he thought: “You’re an idiot. This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. It will never come by again.” He sighed. “The New York exposure, the caliber of the other actors, the play itself, which I’d read but never seen — I didn’t think I was up to it all. I had no confidence in myself. So it’s just a matter of throwing myself under the bus and crawling my way out.”

Throwing yourself under the bus and crawling your's way out. Yowch. Ring of truth.

I have moments where I feel like everything worthwhile in life comes of throwing yourself under various buses. To unpack the metaphor somewhat, I interpret throwing yourself under the bus to mean committing to some task that poses the threat of failure — — playing a concert, conducting an interview, writing an article, portraying Pozzo — by tuning out your own screaming mental objections — "You'll get laughed at!", "You'll burn money!", "That might suck!" — just long enough to let the momentum of contractual obligation, social expectation or both carry you forward (or force you forward, really.)

This is the stuff of hundreds of other aphorisms about plunging in, sinking or swimming and letting chips fall where they may, but for some reason I like Goodman's formulation better. I like it even though it doesn't make that much sense: if you make the leap into the pool, you might learn to swim, but what on Earth does even the most successful self-sub-bus-flinging get you? Maybe the memorability that question lends it is part of the appeal.

The relevant distinction, when weighing an action that may or may not amount to an instance of throwing yourself under the bus, is whether or not the metaphorical bus is actually there. Actions like signing the deal, booking the interview, agreeing to the gig, making the call, buying the tickets, taking the part, joining the project or buying the gear might well count as throwing yourself under the bus. If an action takes a form more like "schedule xing the y," "resolve to x the y," "get around to xing the y" or "maybe think about xing the y," it definitely doesn't count as throwing yourself under the bus. They don't have buses; there's nothing to crush you if you get lazy. When you add that level of contemplation atop the action, how far are you really from declaring you won't do it?