Gleaning Facebook: We Don't Lose Our Younger Ages...

I have heard my mother, Ruth Baird Shaw, express the thought (as Lillian notes below) many times during the last few decades that we don’t lose our younger selves but merely add new editions along the way. One of Mother’s degrees is in gerontology so I suppose it is not surprising that she considered stuff like that long before she became the nonagenarian she is now.

As I have grown older I have realized the truth of the many selves we collect. Somewhere in my skin are the awkward preteen, the insecure high-schooler, the head-over-heels 20-something, the striving teacher, the earnest entrepreneur, the aspiring actor, and many more versions of me. Sometimes an old Terrell will unexpectedly pop up. I have tried to use ‘The Method” in my acting, and I imagine Strasberg & Adler would agree that to successfully inhabit a role one must spend some time in his mental attic sorting through that collection of selves and trying them on to see if they fit the role.

I was happy to read in Lillian’s ‘Director’s Note’ that a grandmother’s wisdom is being applied in a new situation.