Another National I Can

by Jess Hope Katz

“Well, there’s another national anthem

And I think it just began in the ballpark,

Listen hard,

Like the other national anthem

Says to each and every fan:

If you can’t do what you want to

Then you do the things you can.”

-Stephen Sondheim

Whenever I see, hear, consume, a new piece of art there are always words that stick to me. Like a piece of old watermelon Big League Chew to your brand new Converse sneaker, or something far closer to the soul, the musical, “Assassins” is resonating hard with me right now.

I have the privilege of being in an all-female theatre company in New Jersey called Offbook Productions. We are doing a production of “Assassins” and I am playing Charles J. Guiteau. It’s an awesome role, the role of dreams, and I am thrilled to be doing it. As I get more comfortable with these words, lyrics, melodies and rhythms I am reminded of the genius that is Sondheim. I am reminded of how much I love him, because he tells the stories we, as people, need to hear.

One of the core things I have always done with my public speaking students is show them a few specific clips from the 2007 film about the all black college debating team called, “The Great Debaters.” Besides the speech exercises that the debaters perform, I always liked to show it because of one of my favorite lines which is this:

“We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.”

-Robert Eisele

This line is said in the context of a dad talking to his son about life’s responsibilities and the ways the world works. I never realized how resonant it was, until I started teaching and realized that people get it backwards. They think that you get to pick and choose the things you do. Life doesn’t work like that. You have to do the things that are mandatory so you can do the things you enjoy. That is the natural order of things. Whether it is fair or not, who am I to say? It just is.

So, when we started singing the “Assassins” music again last night, I was really struck when we came to the last section of “Another National Anthem” and I clearly heard, “If you can’t do what you want to, then you do the things you can” and I thought back to my public speaking lesson just a few days earlier and started drawing parallels.

I don’t believe that anything happens by accident.

What is the overarching message here? We DO THE THINGS WE CAN.

Life is incredibly hard, and just when you feel like you’ve jumped over one hurdle, another one comes up super quickly.

This is what things have felt like for me, lately. Maybe others have it easier. But I have always believed that good things come through hard work.

So here I am. In the trenches. Doing the thing.

Is it good? Is it right?

I can’t tell you for certain.

But I’m showing up, and doing it.

And that is something to be proud of.

And so I am.