The Puppet Path Not Taken
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“Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction. Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight, turns you into what you are tomorrow, and the day after that…Don’t let life randomly kick you into the adult you don’t want to become.”
- Former Astronaut Chris Hadfield, texted from space
I went through a phase in my 20’s where I used to make hand puppets for fun. I would collect odds and ends from dollar stores and garage sales. Large styrofoam balls were transformed into eyeballs, foam shoulder pads were hinged at one side to become a duck’s bill and fuzzy scrap fabric was bought on the cheap to become everything else. Armed with my glue gun and my collection of odds and sods, I fell in love with the act of creating puppets.
One late night making puppets, I had an idea for what to me felt like a surefire hit television show. It was called Doctor Jelly’s Cheese Factory. It was a workplace sitcom that took place at a cheese manufacturing plant where everything, including the cheese on the assembly line, were puppets. The only thing that wasn’t a puppet was Doctor Jelly, the eccentric old time billionaire industrialist who ran the factory. He was human, but only showed up on an old tube tv screen that hung over the factory floor where he would occasionally transmit weird public health announcements to his assembled puppet workforce. Of all the projects that sit undone in my life, this is the one I think about the most, and in my mind it’s perfect.
When I first started telling people about it my eyes would light up. It felt like my enthusiasm was contagious, because it was always met with incredible expressions of encouragement. But instead of ever setting about seriously trying to make the thing, I instead made excuses of why I couldn’t.
“You know, you could be the next Jim Henson,” a close friend once told me. “That’s ridiculous,” I thought to myself. “Impossible.”
Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?
Around that same time I discovered that a friend was working on Sesame Street. She caught the enthusiasm in my eyes for all things puppets and invited me to visit her on set. A couple of days later, there I was, standing on the infamous Sesame Street, feeling oddly at home.
A couple of weeks later I got another call from the same friend. This time she was offering me a job. The puppet studio she was working for was looking for a production assistant. It was the lowest rung on the job ladder, but it could be a foot in the door. It was a world that I knew I wanted to find a place in and now it seemed like that same world might want me too.
The trick is that I already had a job. I was working at a small TV production company, doing research, answering phones, and whatever else needed doing. It was a good job, and the people I met there are mentors to me to this day. I respected them and was afraid of letting them down. Consumed by loyalty and a sense of responsibility, I said “no” to the job at the puppet studio. My friend asked if I was absolutely sure because these types of job offers didn’t come around that often, but I was firm. I thanked her very much and went about my life.
I’ve said “no” to many opportunities over the years, but none have haunted me like this one. I said no out of responsibility, sure, but also out of fear. Ultimately I said “no” because I didn’t have the faith to pursue the thing that my heart was pulling me towards.
Now it’s not all doom and gloom. I've had a pretty decent career since then, but it’s largely been producing media based on other people’s needs and other people’s ideas. The pay has been good and I’ve worked steadily, but the fact that decades later I still think about that job offer at the puppet studio tells me something. It’s my “path not taken.” There may be a reality where I said yes to the puppet people and today I’m a creator of amazing puppet universes. In this world, Doctor Jelly’s Cheese Factory is the new Muppet Show. And of course there’s also a reality where I still took the gig but it didn’t work out and my life still unfolded very similarly to how it has.
A Puppet Path That Was Taken
A little while ago I stumbled across a Facebook group for my junior high. I was tickled to have found this group, and proceeded to look at the profiles of everyone I knew as a 13 year-old to see where their lives had taken them.
That’s when I came across the profile of my classmate Kanja Chen. When I clicked on Kanja’s profile I saw that he had become a puppeteer. In fact not just any puppeteer, but a featured puppeteer on the Apple TV+ reboot of the Jim Henson series Fraggle Rock.
To me Kanja represented the path I had not taken. Here was someone from a similar world who had become the very thing I had turned my back on.
After not having spoken to him for 35 years, I sat down to write him an email: “I'm going to start off by acknowledging that this is probably going to be a weird email to receive.” I began, “I have no idea if you remember me, but I’d love to talk…”
A week later I was staring at a Zoom screen containing Kanja’s smiling face. Even though I hadn’t seen him in decades, he was so familiar to me in a way you can only be with someone you knew when you were a gangly preteen. I knew his lumpy essence and he knew mine. Instantly the 35 year gap vanished and we began to talk.
Kanja’s path to professional puppetdom wasn’t a straight one. His interest in puppets began around the time I knew him, but rather than pursue it fully he chose instead to take a safer route. Like many in his family before him he enrolled in teacher’s college. Once he was finished he became known as the teacher who brought puppets into his classroom.
His story could have ended there. He had a comfortable job. He got married. He bought a house. Had three kids. On paper it looked like he might have had everything he ever needed. Only he didn’t.
In 2020, just as the lockdowns began, Kanja’s life began coming apart. He was struggling with his marriage, struggling with his family and struggling professionally. He felt spent. He put the breaks on his teaching career, as well as his life, and retreated inwards. And it was in the middle of this breakdown, at 45 years-old, that Kanja got the call he had been waiting for his entire life. The call was from The Jim Henson Company. They were casting for a reboot of Fraggle Rock and wanted Kanja to audition. Kanja didn’t have the energy to even consider the opportunity and without hesitation Kanja knew that his answer was going to be “no”. That’s when his wife stepped in who told Kanja that if he didn’t audition he’d always be left with the question “What if?”
So Kanja did audition…and he got the part. That moment of saying “yes” to the opportunity that lay in front of him would go on to transform his life. It made him feel like he had finally landed in the place he truly belonged.
Turning Regret into Opportunity
What stuck with me after talking to Kanja was how oddly similar our stories were. My “What if?” moment happened in my 20’s and Kanja’s happened in his 40’s, but in both cases our first instincts were to say "no”. To say “no” because saying “yes” would have meant taking a seemingly irrational risk with an outcome that was unknown. On the advice of a creativity coach I’ve been working with, I recently read Michael Singer’s The Surrender Experiment. It chronicles his choice not to be guided by his fears and desires, but instead to surrender to whatever life had in store for him. I often wonder what my life would have been like if I’d surrendered in that moment to the opportunity in front of me and had simply said “yes”.
Kanja’s path wasn’t an easy one, he speaks of fighting against surrendering at times too, but today there’s an infectious feeling of joy you can feel from just being in his presence. His passion as a kid may have taken different directions and shapes as he aged, but he never fully allowed his passion to leave him. I’m inspired by his journey and I am committing to making more space to surrender to the creative passions that live inside of me.
When I started writing this post I stared at the dusty box of puppet making supplies that I’ve kept in my garage and wasn’t sure I wanted to keep holding onto it any longer. Honestly I have no idea if I will ever make puppets again, my creative passions may very well guide me towards new directions and adventures. What I do know for certain is that the version of me in my mid 20’s who was too afraid to take the job working at the puppet studio would be proud of the late 40’s version of me who is still willing to keep playing. I might hang onto that box a little longer, not with the idea of becoming the next Jim Henson, but just for the pure pleasure of saying “yes” to the opportunity of firing up my glue gun to see what happens.
P.S. For more on Kanja’s amazing puppets check out his site at Chensational Puppets.
P.P.S. Have you found ways to surrender to the creativity in your own life? Have you created a practice or a “thing” that you’d be willing to share? If so please let us know! You can respond to this post, or write us at GeoffAndSteve@thecreativityguild.com. We’d very much like to be able to share inspiration that comes from the community gathered here because Creativity + Community is kind of the best thing ever.
P.P.P.S. Also, right about now it would be totally fair of you to be asking yourself, “What exactly is The Creativity Guild?” Next time: The Creativity Guild Manifesto…
You have no idea how much I relate to this. I LOVE puppets -- and have always said if I come back in another life I want to work for Sesame Street. My podcast company once pitched an idea to Sesame Street and I was so excited... didn't pan out but was really cool just to meet them and deal with them as an organization. I am also semi-famous (in puppet land) for booking puppets on the radio.
OMG Geoff you are such a great writer. Loved this. Rooting for you to make puppets....or basically anything. I'd show up to take it in. Congrats