HERO OR ZERO

 

Are you sitting in the dark watching your life go by? Or are you bathed in light, up there on the screen of your imagination, at the centre of the action, where every moment counts? Are you the star of your fleeting days? Or just a bit-player in someone-else’s movie?

“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.”

John Lennon

NO! Let’s not let this one chance slip through our fingers. This is our shot at making it right. Because, this is your story, my story, our story — not to tell, but to start living! Right here, right now, it's up to us to play our part with all the passion and zest we can muster. We can’t determine the way it’s going to turn out, but, we can do our damnedest — all the way to the last frame!

• imagine it is you living your life up there on the screen

• imagine it is you behind the camera calling the shots

• imagine the twists and turns of the story are up to you

• imagine the mood, the music, the theme — all down to your inspiration.

This is not just about identifying with a character in a movie, of projecting our fantasies onto a fictional character. This is about seizing that character’s presence and power for ourselves. Deep inside us all there is a hero waiting to be unleashed. We are all a bit like Mr. Incredible (The Incredibles), once a bonefide superhero, who now passes himself off as an over-weight suburban insurance salesman for fear of causing offense.. Too often we project onto stars the qualities we ourselves have hidden within. We imagine others have the daring, the courage, the passion that we crave. Well now is the time to become active agents in the twists and turns of our own destiny. Don’t dream your life away — live it!

 

anyone can be the hero of their own story

Imagine you are in a cinema watching “YOU the movie” up there on the screen. Are you rooting for yourself? Squirming with embarrassment? Groaning in exasperation? Or just plain bored? Whoever you are, where-ever you are, whatever your age, size, shape, or colour, there are no excuses — that's what the history of the movies tell us.

In the beginning Luke Skywalker (Star Wars) was just a feckless farm boy, Neo (The Matrix) a geek asleep at his terminal, John McClane (Die Hard) an average Joe whose wife has walked out on him, Dan (The Karate Kid) a schoolboy wimp, Vivian (Pretty Woman) a prostitute, Erin (Erin Brockovitch) a hard-pushed single-mum, Marge (Fargo) a pregnant mum-to-be, Frank Galvin (The Verdict) an alcoholic and an ambulance chaser, Melvin Udall (As Good As It Gets) an obsessive-compulsive whose life is hedged around by bizarre routines, Forest Gump (Forest Gump) a mentally challenged simpleton, and Christy Brown (My Left Foot) a quadriplegic ...

Now, some of these characters were based on real people; others dreamt up by Hollywood, or born out of the blue, but, the interesting thing is — it makes no difference. To our mind’s eye each can show us a way forward. First we need to see a solution to our problem; then comes putting it to the test in the real world — the ACTION & CUT of our own real-life movie. As Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) tells Nick (Michael Douglas) in Basic Instinct:

“You make it up, but it has to be believable. They call it suspension of disbelief.”

Joseph Eszterhas, Basic Instinct

The story can start story right from where you are, once upon a time, right now. Why not? Let’s start suspending disbelief. Let’s start believing! Plumped down in the dark, waiting for the next attraction/distraction to come along, it’s easy enough to slip into a passive do-nothing, feel-nothing state of mind, where not much really matters any more. Well, NIX to that!

 

a hero gets up out of his seat

A hero does not sit on his backside letting the world drift by. He may start out a passive dollop of dough, but, you can bet, this is a quality he is going to shake off, and fast. So too with you — this is your movie! Right now you may think you are above all the drama and intrigue going on all around you; in other words, you are full of self-importance. On the other hand, you may think you are down there, beneath the scene that really matters most to you; in other words, you are full of self-pity. But this way, either way, you are off-screen, out of the story. Now stand up, shake all that off, turn around, take a deep breath, and step into the action, into your story. Let’s go! It’s time to —unleash the hero within.

“When we root for the brave underdog, it is, in part, because we are courageous or have love. When we cry with characters who have been hurt, it is, in part, because we empathize with suffering, are compassionate and even saint like.”

Marsha Sinetar, Reel Power

If we can identify with the hero we must, in some small way at least, be like that character. That is an experience we have all had. And that is the point of power from which we can light up our whole lives.

 

an “offer” has already been made

Seeing a lightening-fast comedian at work or an actor adept at improvisation, you may wonder how they can be so nimble and assured in any situation come-what-may, while the rest of us stumble, clumsy and tongue-tied, from pillar to post. For sure, they will have had a lot of practice — they are professionals after all. But at bottom there is a simple secret which we can all learn.

Keith Johnstone, the guru of improvisation, calls anything that an actor does, whatever — “an offer”. Other actors in the scene are then put on the spot to either accept the offer and run with it, or block it and try going off on a tangent of his own.

"I tell my actors never to think up an offer but to assume that one has already been made. Groucho Marx understood this: a contestant on his quiz game 'froze' so he took the man's pulse and said, "Either this man's dead or my watch has stopped."

If you are living, then an offer has already been made to you. It may not be the offer you wanted, the offer you dreamed of, or even one that you expected, but so it goes. For sure, an offer has already been made; now it’s up to you. You can block it and turn away; or accept, run with it, and let the fun begin.

“People with dull lives often think that their lives are dull by chance. In reality everyone more or less chooses the events that happen to them by their pattern of blocking and accepting.”

Keith Johnstone, Impro

YOU are where the action is

Assume that you are already slap bang, right in the middle of where the action is. What now? What next? What’s going on here? Whatever the story, there is a simple logic to it — CAUSE/EFFECT. We can say that the actor who makes the offer is at cause; the actor put on the spot to accept or block is at effect. If you are going to be a player in the scene, you have to be at one end or the other, one end and then the other. There’s a rhythm to it; back and forth, give and take — action/reaction. Elementary, right? A problem only arises if you get stuck trying to cling to one end of the interchange — you’ve been hurt and now you are afraid to reach out; or at last you are winning and now you are not going to let anyone get to you. Both the passion and the pain soon start to dry up, and then — no more juice, no more story.

Imagine you are a movie star preparing to go before the cameras. You have on your costume and makeup. Now, you must put aside your personal history, your every day worries, your staff problems, your financial finagling, your star-meter ratings, your sagging jowls — and tune in to the here and now. And, at a moment’s notice, you will step forward into the light, into the scene, put your full attention on the others there with you — let go of fear and trust in yourself. Between the words, ACTION and CUT you will show us what it means to be alive.

For the rest of us, our moment will too often be missed, muffed, best forgotten. We might start out well, but then things don’t go the way we expect, we become judgmental and unconsciously withdraw. From then on in, we are only half present — there in body, maybe, but not in spirit. Without intending it, in fact, intending just the reverse, we have performed a shutdown.

“While in a shutdown you may find yourself scowling, tensing your shoulders, holding your breath, or all of the above. Each of us is unique in our signs and symptoms, but the more you look for them the more easily they become apparent.

Look. Keep Looking. Look so often that the very first indication of a shutdown sends a bell through your whole being.”

Raphael Cushnir, Setting Your Heart On Fire

You will soon come to recognise your customary pattern of mental and physical signs: this is known as your signature shutdown. Becoming aware of this pattern is the first step to dissolving the barrier between you and YOU the movie.

To shine in the game of life we have to be open to give and take, cause and effect, ready for anything. Imagine this: to be stuck at cause, is like trying to out chill Terminator, and to be stuck at effect, is like trying to soften up on Daffy Duck. Come on! We have to have the courage to stand our ground, be at effect, feel and not shutdown. — be open to others and ourselves. Then, we have to have the courage to get out of our own way, put ourselves on the spot, be there — at cause — and let rip. Whatever the moment demands, whatever we feel the need to do, we must make our move. No matter how tight the fix we are in, we will never be without options; but unless the action-reaction cycle is completed — in one way or another — we will soon start to choke.

 

who is twitching your strings?

A script reader can sometimes be dazzled by one whammo scene after another, and fail to see that the hero is just running around reacting to the gamut of situations being served up by the bad guys. He or she might make an exhilarating show of it, but sooner or later, it’s going to dawn that someone-else is pulling the strings. This is the passive-active trap — hard to spot, easy to fall into.

You could well find yourself in this trap in life. You don’t sit on your backside, you flit about like a blue-assed fly, sweat on your brow, barking orders, (or, maybe, breaking down in tears) — either way, raging with passion, but still going nowhere. In business this is sometimes given the macho name of firefighting, bit it is still no job for a hero — you dealing with the problems, but neglect the crucial big step ahead.

In the personal domain the passive-active trap is another name for all those rituals and routines maintained through force of habit, or, maybe, to meet the expectations of other people. It may be that you are constantly harassed by tasks which you must perform for the sake of duty. Or it may be that you hide in a blur of busyness, afraid to recognise that love has passed you by. You busy yourself to keep cheerful, or, worse, keep talk-talk-talking, just for the sake of talking, still trying to convince yourself, long after everyone-else has left the building. So it goes — there is activity aplenty, but no action.

You don’t remember the name of films where the hero was passive-active and stayed that way — they were all failures. A real hero does not let himself be pushed around by circumstance for long. A hero calls the shots. For sure, he may start off in reaction to the havoc wreaked by the bad guys, or a wicked turn of fate, but before long he is going to prove his metal, jump in and seize the initiative in action. So too with you and YOU the movie.

 

victim is just the flip side of hero

Oh yes, we all have our “victim story” — the one where we are the doe-eyed innocent done wrong by some dirty rat. Then we will have a plucky tale, where we are the hero who showed those bastards. And, tucked away, no doubt, we have an anecdote or two with which can chalk up points by telling of our Good Samaritan’s deeds.

Despite all the countless stories there are and still might be, psychologist, Stephen Karpman, discovered that only three action roles are necessary for the emotional reversals that make up drama — Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim. Audience anticipation kicks in as soon as these roles are established; but, there is no drama unless and until there is a change in their configuration, or, in other words, a turn-about in who is wearing which hat. This is what makes a sequence, and a sequence is the building block of a story.

Sometimes, of course, the Perpetrator is unknown, and then we have a mystery. Or it could be the identity of the Victim or Helper — that makes for intrigue in any number of variations of plot. Sometimes the changes will happen over a long period of time, sometimes in the blink of an eye. Often there will be one triangle inside another, and, more often than not, a battle over who occupies which position when.

So, in Pirates of the Caribbean (Curse of the Black Pearl), when Elizabeth (Keira Knightly) faints, and falls into the bay, she is the Victim, and Norrington (Jack Davenport). who has just proposed, believes himself to be the Persecutor, while we know it is — unwittingly — her father, Swann (Jonathan Pryce), who has made her wear a too-tight corset. To the surprise of one and all, up pops a Rescuer in the person of Jack Sparrow, (Johnny Depp), who gallantly dives into the sea to pull her out. However, when he is discovered to have just ripped off the offending corset, (to aid her resuscitation), he becomes the Victim, and Norrington, who now recognizes him as a pirate, the Persecutor. Elizabeth revives and steps in as his Rescuer, protesting that he has just saved her life. This gives Jack the chance to seize back his gun, and become the Persecutor of Norrington — so completing the triangle, and ready to start over again.

All our conflicts in life can be seen as struggles to move around this triangle. For example:

“One of the commonest switches occurs in divorces. During the marriage, for example, the husband is the persecutor and the wife plays the part of the victim. Once the divorce complaint is filed, these roles are reversed: the wife becomes the persecutor, and the husband the victim, while his lawyer and her lawyer play the part of competing rescuers.”

Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello?

To put it another way, we could say that the Perpetrator is at cause, the Victim at effect, and broaden the Rescuer to a Helper, of either the perpetrator or the victim, at assist/resist. So, to be in the game, you are either have to do it, have it done to you, or assist or resist the process. Sooner or later — and I hope it won’t be later — you are going to have to make your move.

 

your everyday life in the ordinary world

When a movie first lights up the screen there may be an exciting action hook to grab audience attention. Nowadays, that is often number one; but, before the story can properly begin, every movie has to set up the ordinary world of it’s protagonist, who is generally the main character, played by the star of the show. Inevitably, he will be shown in a world that reflects who he is — which may not be the way he sees himself, or the way he would like to be. This is the base station from which the emotional journey of the story begins.

• Look around you now. To intensify your life you only have to pay attention and recognise each moment as a moment in your story.

• What does your world say about you? Can it be just coincidence that things have turned out this way?

• What is it that you do not want others to know about you? What is it you fear may one day be discovered?

The way you dress, the way you walk, the way you talk, the neighbourhood in which you live — all this does not just reflect who you are, but provides you with a haven and an alibi. The on-going circumstances of your day-to-day life are wrapped around you like a warm blanket. You’ve set it up that way by accepting or blocking what life offered up. And, that way, you’ve gained an identity of sorts to manage. You’ve struck a deal, made your compromise, in order to protect yourself from facing up to something far worse — that one thing you fear the most, and, maybe, also that thing for which, secretly, you most yearn.

 

tell-tale clues to the hidden you

In putting your best face forward, there will always another side you would prefer to keep hidden. In polite parlance this may be called “personal short-comings”; in script-writing jargon it is known as the character flaw . For example, in To Die For Nicole Kidman plays a bright-eyed small-town poppet with an innocent-enough wish to become a TV weather girl; but what her gauche manners conceal is an ambition so ruthless it will stop at nothing. Or, in different circumstances, it could be the other way round: it is your secret virtue that you would like to keep hidden. In Reservoir Dogs Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) cannot keep to the cold impersonal code of the gangsters to which he has signed up, because of his simple need for human contact — and this leads to their downfall. On a more modest scale, in Ordinary People the flaw of the mother, Beth (Mary Tyler Moore), is simply that she cannot express love for her family for fear of losing control. Whatever your story, the character flaw is one factor that will stand in the way of a happy ending.

Remember, the ordinary world of the hero reflects who he is, and not who he would like to be. Script doctor, Ron Tobin calls the particular lie of the ordinary world the enabling circumstances because, perhaps knowingly, perhaps unconsciously, these circumstances have been adopted and adapted by the hero to enable him to get by without having to come to terms with his flaw.

“In Hook the demands of the adult Peter’s corporate world allows him to keep his past identity forgotten. In Postcards From the Edge the movie business allows Meryl Streep’s character to keep so busy that she is able to avoid confrontation with her mother and an examination of her own empty life and fears.”

Ron Tobin, High Concept Movies

So, in Rocky Rocky Balboa, (Sylvester Stallone) starts out skulking around down-town Philadelphia in the pay of second-rate mobsters, hanging out in no-hope gyms, refusing the help of a boxing coach who might make demands on him, just so that he can carry on unconcerned with the certain knowledge of being a loser.

So, in Casablanca we find Rick, (Humphrey Bogart), running a bar and crooked gambling den for unprincipled riff-raff scrambling to save their own skins. Of all the places he could have gone he has found this hole in an unaligned state and surrounded himself with self-interested cynics just so that he does not have to face his own cynicism and self-betrayal.

Perhaps you have set up your ordinary world to enable you to feel at home with your flaw? Perhaps you are just waiting for an Ilsa or Apollo Creed to walk through the door?

• do you feel your life script has already been written?

• have you been allotted a bit part in someone-else’s movie?

• has your never-ending story become your prison?

• do you dream day and night of making an escape?

Whether you are ready to tell or not, you have a story. Even an amnesiac has a story though he cannot remember what it is. Without a story you are not even human. But is it a story that thrills when you recapitulate, or condemns you to a life of misery. Is it a story of your invention or one that has been thrust upon you? Without the wherewithal to dream up a better story for themselves, people cling to the one they have already got. It may be a story of abuse and degradation, but, nevertheless, as family therapist, Gianfranco Cecchin, remarks:

“... they become extremely loyal to their terrible stories.”

A story casts a spell. You’ve seen a hypnotist’s stooge on stage, blithely acting out the crazy suppositions that he has been given: so, without realizing, we spend much of our lives in a trance acting out our own life story. We see only it’s reality, not the wide world of possibility outside. Day in day out, we are suckered into our soap operas, our petty schemes, our compensations and justifications, and are soon entangled in a habitweb like a fly caught in the web of a spider..

According to behavioural researchers our “habitweb” makes us fat and takes years off our lives. Habits like brushing our teeth are good for us, but there is a darker side to the Habit-web Now, some habits, like brushing our teeth, may be good for us; others like shooting heroin are certainly bad. But, while our mind is on automatic, the habitweb goes on spinning without discrimination.

“The main problem with habits is that they do not exist in isolation. They form a web with other habits. Each one links with the others, nestling and supporting them. On its own each habit may not be very strong, but, put together the whole habitweb becomes enormously tough and resilient.”

Fletcher, Pine & Penman, The No Diet Diet: Do Something Different

This is the invisible scaffolding of our ordinary world, the skein that holds our enabling circumstances together. Safe in our comfort zone we endlessly go over the same ground — until, suddenly, something happens.

 

this is your wake-up call

It could be a dream that haunts you, a meeting with a stranger, a terrible accident, a trivial coincidence, an inexcusable blunder, a mystery that cannot be explained. It is something from outside the enabling circumstances of your everyday world. Something beyond your routines, pastimes and games; something that cannot be wrapped up in your habit-web. It could be good news, or bad; a wondrous opportunity, or a dire warning. Whatever, it is something which jolts you awake, challenges you to the core, and calls upon you to act.

This event is what, what mythologist, Joseph Campbell, calls The Call to Adventure; what Carlos Castenada's fictional sorcerer, Don Juan, calls " a cubic centimeter of chance", and what script guru, Robert McKee, calls, The Inciting Incident;. It is a moment when you suddenly realize that , in the words of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) in Fight Club:

“This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.”

Ross Grayson Bell, Fight Club

In Field of Dreams it comes when a young farmer hears voices inexplicably commanding him to make a baseball diamond in his fields; in Dead Poet’s Society, it happens when a new school teacher reads a poem to his class and urges them to “Seize the Day”; in When Harry Met Sally it happens, well ... when Harry meets Sally.

Receiving The Call is like being slapped across the face with a gauntlet. You may not know what it is all about, but it is a challenge that cannot be ignored, an affront to YOU.

“Seeing the opportunities inherent within a challenge is the true meaning of chance, and making the best possible use of those opportunities is the very essence of seizing the fleeting moment of chance.”

Théun Mares, The Mists of Dragon Lore

In Alice in Wonderland Alice’s call comes when the White Rabbit lures her down a hole into the parallel dimension of Wonderland. So with Neo in The Matrix when he takes the red pill. A door opens, and ...

 

when a door opens you have to walk through

... or have it slam in your face. So the saying goes: you can step through or hesitate at the threshold and lose forever your fleeting moment of chance. This is potentially the beginning of a story, the portal to a new world, a new YOU. Or, of course, you may decide to take the blue pill, turn your back, brush the whole thing aside, and go back to your old ways, not even acknowledge that a call has been made. Many movies show us this.

In Unforgiven The Call to Adventure comes to Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood) while he is wrestling pigs in the rain; but he has set his mind on being a homesteader and goes back to eating mud. Worlds apart, in Notorious, Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) is living a life of fun and frivolity as a society It-girl when she is made a proposal by Devlin (Cary Grant) to become a spy. She turns him down, denies her patriotism, but is trapped by a recording he has already made of her airing her fiercely-held views.

This turning away is known as The Refusal of the Call. Sometimes the hero feels the thrill of the unknown, but fear stops him in his tracks. On the other side of the threshold might be the way to something dreadful, or something wonderful. Either way, he feels daunted by the prospect, unprepared, and, so, he scurries back to his ordinary world:

“... it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work or ‘culture’, the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless ...”

Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces

This is the warning given by myths and fairytales, but it is something rarely seen in movies, except as the result of something which, we might gather, has happened in the past. So, in the anguished cry of Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in On the Waterfront:

“I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum ...”

Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront

Or, in the sad ruminations of Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) in About Schmidt:

“I know we're all pretty small in the big scheme of things, and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference, but what kind of difference have I made?”

Alexander Payne, About Schmidt

In movies reflections about missed opportunities come when the hero faces another challenge, because, sooner or later the hero must walk through that door — or you will walk out of the cinema. Without an acceptance of The Call there will be no story worth telling. That goes for you, and YOU the movie, too

 

the invisible screen between you and your life

In the movies the hero crosses the threshold; in real life, all but the brave few turn their backs on the open door and walk away. They are the zeroes, the might-have-beens, the dreamers, the depressives who soon come to feel that life has passed them by. Perhaps there will be another opportunity for them, or perhaps not. Who knows how many Calls there may be in a lifetime?

“People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For sure, we are all happy as sandboys to escape the daily round, sit in the dark,For sure, we are all happy as sandboys to escape the daily round, sit in the dark, and watch the hero of a movie go where we fear to tread. Just like us, the hero on screen would often prefer to follow the pleasure principle and not face up to his situation in the real world. For example, in Schindler’s List Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) has no desire to stick his nose out. He is all set to profiteer from the Nazi persecution of the Jews, and, wallow in a privileged life of luxury. He has good enough reason to turn a blind eye to the atrocities going on around him, but — finds he cannot. On impulse, one day, he risks reprisals by ensuring that train carriages packed with suffocating prisoners be hosed down. Then, gradually, it dawns on him that, the same money with which he buys his champagne and fois gras, he could use to buy lives.

Oskar Schindler

Look, All you have to do is tell me what it's worth to you. What's a person worth to you?

Amon Goeth

No, no, no, No. What's one worth to you!

Oskar has found his Ruling Passion: it is not for luxury, wealth or power, but, simply, to save the lives of “his people”, the poor Jewish workers in his factory. By the end of the movie Oskar, with all his worldly wealth spent, is still consumed by his passion.

Oskar Schindler

I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just ... I could have got more.

Itzhak Stern

Oskar, there are eleven hundred people who are alive because of you. Look at them.

Oskar Schindler

If I'd made more money... I threw away so much money. You have no idea. If I'd just ...

Itzhak Stern

There will be generations because of what you did.

Oskar Schindler

I didn't do enough!

Branko Lustig, Schindler’s List
 

To cross the threshold the hero must find his Ruling Passion. It may not be as grand as Oscar Schindler’s; it may just be an intense love of chocolate, like Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) in Chocolat, or, simply, a roaring passion to stay alive, like Ed Gentry (Jon Voight) in Deliverance. Whatever, your Ruling Passion is not something that you can take on, or make up, as you will. It is something you must find somewhere between the dream and the reality of your life. Only you can know your ruling passion; it is that which sets your heart on fire.

 

there is no such thing as a half-hearted hero

Beyond the ordinary world, on the other side of the threshold, is risk and real danger. Only a fool would choose to stumble into this uncharted territory without a firm purpose. So armed, the hero can begin assimilating the unknown to the known, step by step. This is the path with heart. Without heart the path will wear us down, break us. The path with heart can take us to victory.

The opposite of fear is not bravado, but faith. The hero can rely on his ruling passion to carry him all the way to achieving his maximum capacity, and that is what gives him faith in himself. In crossing the threshold from his ordinary, everyday world into the special world of the story he puts himself on the line, commits one hundred per cent to achieving his goal, a goal for its own sake, not to please someone-else or prove a point. It is imagining the goal achieved that sets the hero on fire, the absolute necessity of making it real that gives him his power.

• are you reality challenged or challenging your reality?

• do you watch your life from behind a screen of glass?

• are you still waiting for the main feature to begin?

• is an open door about to slam in your face?

Most never dare to leave the confines of their ordinary world, to find a way out of the maze of their enabling circumstance, to break free of the habitweb, to unleash their imagination, to enter the special world of their story, to live out their passions and follow the path with heart all the way to their goal. Instead, they sit in the dark, watching others do the living for them. The movies are like a shattered mirror in which we see our dreams. However fantastic the conflicts on screen, we cannot help subconsciously mapping the parts of the story onto our own lives. All we need do is recollect those passions, those inspirations, those thoughts in the context of our own reality, our own stories, great or small,. Emerging from the “as-if” world, back into the light, we must bring back with us a spark with which we can ignite action in own lives. Of course, you may not think of yourself as the hero of a story, but, there again, you may not be the person you think you are. Who you are remains to be seen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .