Follow Your Love

My very dear friend, filmmaker Richard Dutcher (God's Army, Brigham City, Falling, Evil Angel...) was recently asked by a local school to speak at it's graduation. I'm so happy he was. The address given was so beautifully brilliant that I asked if he would allow me to share. Read it. Read it again. Then read it to your teens. And then read it to them again.

WALDEN SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT – 2009
Aspen Grove, Utah

Follow Your Love
By Richard Dutcher

My friend Teddy came up to me not long before my graduation from high school. We were both actors. What he said to me really surprised me. He said, “Richard, if I’m not famous by the time I’m 21…I’m going to kill myself.”

I remember thinking two things. First of all, that he was completely serious. Second, that I was a far better actor and even I didn’t expect to be famous until I was 22.

We graduated and went our separate ways. I remember when I turned 21 I thought about Teddy and, not having seen him in any movies or on TV, I wondered if he had kept his vow. I never knew what happened. Recently I remembered him. I wondered if he was still around. I got on my computer to see if he had a Facebook page. Sure enough, there he was, with a big smile on his face and a pretty woman in his arms.

Teddy has never become famous. Not even close. (In fact, he only has about 12 Facebook friends.) And he doesn’t do any acting anymore. But he seems happy. And now, with some maturity, his priorities have changed. His perspective is focused less inward and more outward. Now, instead of saying “Richard, if I don’t get famous I’m going to kill myself,” he says: “Richard, if you get any more famous, I’m going to kill you.”

This, I believe, is a much healthier attitude.

At 19, I put my personal ambitions on hold and I went to Mexico to be a missionary because I believed at the time that God wanted me to do it. When I came home at 21 I was full of energy, ready to get back into the world, ready to go out and achieve all the things I had always wanted to achieve. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to marry a wonderful woman and have about a dozen kids. I wanted to write some good novels. Despite the fact that I didn’t have any money, I wanted to immediately get back into college. After watching me as I worked my butt off to get money for college, and seeing that I was already studying on my own, and hearing me talk about all the things I wanted to do, and listening to me express my frustration at how slowly things were going, my stepfather said something that made me think. He said, “Richard, you’re a young man. You can slow down. There’s going to be plenty of time to do all the things you want to do in life.”

I thought about that. I let it sink in and I decided, and I still believe with all my heart, that he was dead wrong.

You see, life is short and it goes by fast. It can end for any one of us at any time and, despite what you believe, there’s no guarantee that there’s anything else. A lot of people believe that this life, our lives, are to be lived for the reward of something after this life. I believe, in the deepest center of my soul, that this is horse shit.

My high school friend Mike was the president of the senior class. I was the student body vice president. We both had a lot of things we wanted to do, to experience, to be in life. The winter following graduation, Mike went on a snowmobile trip with another friend. Just as he had done several times before. But this time they got lost. The sun went down. It got very cold. Mike decided that the smart thing to do was to build a snow cave and try to stay warm and make it through the night. His friend decided it would be better to walk, even if he couldn’t find help. At least he would stay warm.

His friend walked for several hours and finally found other people. A team was already looking for them. Although the friend was exhausted and frostbitten, he led the team to Mike’s cave. They called for him. He didn’t come out. They pulled him out, and he was dead. At 19.

He was a smart young man. A handsome young man. A good young man. And his life was over. And whether your time comes at 19 or 49 or 89 or 109, I believe the same questions will go through your mind: “What was the story of my life? What did I do? What did I love? Who did I love? Am I loved? What did I experience? What did I learn? How did I grow?”

In high school I was forced to go to a guidance counselor and take aptitude tests to determine what I should do in life. My teachers seemed to ignore the fact that I already knew what I was going to do in life. I knew from the first time I saw a movie when I was six years old that I was going to make movies, but I still had to take the damn test. Because I was told that wanting to make movies was an unrealistic expectation.

Afterwards, the guidance counselor told me that he wasn’t sure what I should do. Maybe be a doctor or a lawyer because I had the aptitude and because they make a lot of money. And that I should probably join the Army and put in a few years because then they would help me with the costs of college.

Looking back on it, it strikes me as ridiculous. My high school sent young kids, full of promise and hope, to a miserable middle-aged guy who didn’t know what the hell he wanted to do with his life, or he probably wanted to be a rock star when he was a kid, but he never got around to it and so he ended up as a guidance counselor in a windowless office that he had to share with two other middle aged “counselors.”

I remember being baffled that he would think I had an aptitude for the military. I knew myself well enough at age16 to know that I would be one of the worst soldiers in the history of the armed forces. I later learned from a recruiter that guidance counselors often get what amounts to a kick-back, a little bit of money every time they “recommend” someone who actually joins the service. So this man was willing to guide me along the path of life, to counsel me into the military and perhaps onto a battlefield, in order to collect a couple of hundred dollars from the the U.S. Army.

Beware who you listen to.

I’m not one to give other people advice, to tell other people how they should live their lives. However, I didn’t ask to speak today. I was asked. So…seeing as how I was asked…and seeing as how my oldest son is one of you…I do have a message for you. For all of you. But especially for my son. For Lucas.

“Follow your love.”

What do I mean by that? Just that. Follow Your Love. Unless, of course, your love is a boy or a girl. In which case, be sure you don’t follow to close or you might get arrested.

Follow Your Love.

That’s not something anybody ever told me. No guidance counselors, no teachers, no bishops or clergymen, no parents.

Somehow I knew that on my own. I think, as a young child, I grew up watching adults and being very aware of how miserable and screwed up so many of their lives were. And how the smartest thing to do would be to ask their advice, and whatever they said…do the exact opposite. If they tell you to go work at Novell, you should probably go play a guitar on a street corner in San Francisco.

If they tell you put as much money as you can into the 401k, you should probably go spend it on a Jaguar and a really great home entertainment system.

Be who you know in your heart that you should be. If you’re a scientist, if that’s your love, be a scientist. If you’re an artist, be an artist. If you’re a social worker or a teacher or a businessman or an astronaut or an accountant or a rock star or a truck driver or a filmmaker or a guidance counselor or a gay activist. Follow Your Love.

I had another friend in high school, Sammy Chick, who wanted to be a truck driver. Honestly. He LOVED trucks. He wanted to own his own rig and spend his whole life on the highway. It’s practically all he ever talked about. I hope he did it.

Follow Your Love. It’s the advice I give myself when I’m not sure where to go or what to do. It’s advice that has served me well.

I knew I wanted to make movies. Something no one in my family had ever DREAMED of. But I loved movies, clearly more than anyone in my family or in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, had ever loved movies, so I followed that circus right out of town.

And the funny thing about following your love is, even though it may take a very long time for you to arrive at her feet, or even though you may never arrive, you find the journey to be pleasant, sometimes fun, often beautiful, and always worth the trouble. Whatever the trouble is. And, believe me, sometimes the trouble gets very thick.

One day, while studying filmmaking and simultaneously dating many women looking for my life’s mate, I was at an audition and I looked across the room and I saw the young woman that I had been looking for. I watched the way she talked and the way she moved and the way she acted, and I knew that she belonged with me. That I wanted her in my life. Is there love at first sight? Absolutely. And there’s a whole wonderful romantic story to tell about that, but we don’t have time. What I DO want to point out is that I didn’t find her at some bar or at a singles’ dance or at a Saturday night party. As fun as those places can be, they’re not the best places to find a soul mate. I found my romantic love, unexpectedly, as I was busy following my professional love.

You see, as I was walking down my path, the path that I knew was making me happy, giving me joy, and that would lead me where I wanted to go, one day I look to my side and there’s this wonderful girl whose own path had intersected mine. You see, she was following her love, too. And we found ourselves walking together. And it was easy to be friends and it was easy to be lovers. We liked the same things, we loved the same things, we liked hanging around with the same kind of people (generally).

Follow your Love. Live your life IN and looking for YOUR happiness. That’s how and where you’ll find your lover. If you want one.

And what if you don’t KNOW what your love is? Well, find it. Go out and find it. Maybe you do know what you love, but you’ve been told it isn’t practical. Forget that.

Maybe you know what you love, but there are people around you discouraging you. Then go away to college or to another city and leave them behind. They think they’re helping you; they’re not. It’s your life. Go live it. You can always go back and visit the well-meaning obstacles for a few days at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but go live your life.

Or maybe you’ve always had your needs well taken care of and you generally haven’t LOVED anything, WANTED anything with a PASSION. Well…I don’t know. I can’t relate. Honestly. There are things I want as badly as a man dying of thirst in the desert wants a bucket of water. Maybe, if you really don’t know what you want, you need to go into the desert, metaphorically speaking of course, and discover what your water is. What you have to have or else you’ll die.

Remember: It’s your life. It doesn’t belong to your parents, your family, your church, your employer, your country, or your friends. It’s yours. Own it. Live it.

Also: Life is short and there are no guarantees. Listen to your heart. Follow Your Love.

When I attended my 10 year high school reunion I was shocked at how many of my classmates had already given up. They had found, after only ten years, that life was hard, that love didn’t always happen or didn’t always work out. They had found that somehow they had lost their dreams. Life at 28 was a disappointment. Many of them had clearly already just settled in for the ride. They were going to let this big ugly bus take them wherever it was going.

That was a shame. A damn shame. At 28. Are you kidding me?

In the words of Al Capone, “It’s not over until it’s over.” (That’s from the movie The Untouchables, not from real life, of course. But it’s still true).

An older friend of mine once told me, “I’ve done everything I’ve ever wanted to do in life. But it has always taken me a hell of a lot longer to do it than I expected.”

I ran into a friend of mine at the theater recently. Her name is Marilyn. She’s a writer, and she’s a beautiful woman, and she’s probably 70 years old. As we talked she spoke with passion about the book she is writing and about the future books she wants to write. Many people, at her age, are just watching television and waiting for the end, waiting for someone to cover them with dirt. But she’s still working, still living, still learning, still dreaming. She’s an inspiration to me.

I hope you’re not seeing life as my friend Teddy once did. I hope you’re not planning to jump off a skyscraper if you haven’t won the Nobel Prize by age 25. I hope you’re not thinking as my stepfather did, because you don’t have all the time in the world. I hope you can see life as my friend Marilyn sees it and that you live long lives filled with wonder, achievement, beauty, happiness, love and passion.

Final summation:
Life is short. There are no guarantees.
It’s your life. Own it.
Listen to Your Heart.
Follow Your Love.
It’s Not Over Until It’s Over.
And, in the words of Winston Churchill: “Never never never never give up.”