I’m upset right now.
I love America. Since coming here for the first time in 2011 on vacation, the place captivated me completely. That was the point where I realized that this is where I wanted to be. This is where I wanted to live and work. This place is amazing!
The people I have met, my friends here, have been the most genuine, helpful, supportive and welcoming people I think I have ever known. This is not to denigrate my friends and family back in the UK as my close friends and family have all been supportive and helpful too. The difference is I have known some of them for 25 years or more (or my entire life in the case of my family). The people I know out here have, within a very brief period of time, become firm friends.
I have worked more as an actor over here than I did in the UK. In fact, I think I have paid more in taxes to the IRS this year alone than the entire amount I earned in the UK during 2014/2015 as a whole. I fit in here. I want to work here with all the people that captivated me as a child, or as an adult when I watched the movies. I want to be in front of Roger Deakin’s camera one day. I want to act for Kevin Smith, John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, JJ Abrams and many, many more. I want to appear on screen next to Gary Oldman, Sir Patrick Stewart, Sir Ian Mckellen, Rutger Hauer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kurt Russell, Harrison Ford and many, many more. This is the place dreams are made… and I am making my dreams my reality. However, this isn’t the point of this blog post.
I feel the world is tearing itself apart. The levels of hate I have seen both back in my post-Brexit UK and here since the Presidential election, have been indescribable. I don’t care who you voted for, either here or in the UK, as long as you see how the world is growing darker and are doing something, anything, no matter how small, to make it less so.
The world isn’t going to change overnight. No way, no sir. So what can the average person do to help? Apart from getting involved in your political system (and if you do that, make sure you do it for the right reasons), or a job that allows you to help people, such as emergency services, military, law enforcement and any one of the other, largely thankless jobs that amazing people do, just do one random act of kindness a day. Anything! It doesn’t have to be a big gesture at all! Smile at someone. Hold a door open for someone. Let someone out in traffic, or if someone lets you out, wave your hand in thanks. Pay kindness forward. Hate only breeds hate. Love and kindness can overcome them.
Let me tell you a story.
Many years back, I had a crush on a girl (shock! Horror!) She was a depressed soul and I felt for her dearly. One night, friends and I were at a local pub (or bar for my American chums) and she was supposed to meet us for drinks. I felt something was wrong and walked the four miles to her house (I was young, drunk and broke) to see if she was ok. It was dark as I stood on the pavement outside and studied the building., Just then, the curtain moved and I saw her face pop out. She saw me and came down. As the door opened, I realized something was wrong. She had taken about eight complete packs of pills and was just looking at the stars one final time before she died. I stayed with her until Emergency services came, keeping her awake and talking to her.
This was the first but not the only time I have seen people caught in the jaws of death and it launched me into a life where I want to help people. All of my jobs, by one route or another, have been about helping people. Even acting is about helping people. I want to see the world be a better place and I believe that the movie and tv industry can play a big part in this. We can showcase good things and bad things. We can provoke discussions on a wide variety of subjects, from global warming to apartheid, from homophobia to gender inequality and so on.
As I often say, “Do one thing a day that scares you.” I am going to amend that to add “Do one random act of kindness a day.” Start there. Do more if the mood takes you, but do one.
We, alone, hold the keys to humanity’s own salvation or doom and it will be through our thoughts, our words and our deeds, not government as a whole, not religion as a whole, not military supremacy or subjugation.
Through us. Together.
Now go pay the kindness forward.
Damien Gerard 