If you are like me, you think about what you eat. You carefully consider what to put in your mouth. If you are like me, you choose attentively what you do with your time and when. Ultimately, what we do the most, defines us. You are what you do as much as what you eat, and the two most certainly relate. 

 

 

I remember in 2009, I was sitting on the international jury of CircusNext. I think it was still Jeunes Talents Cirque at the time. Tim Roberts was sitting beside me, the most lovable, huggable, sensitive, funny, intelligent chap in the world’s professional circus scene. We have been old friends since 2004, which is something that makes me happy every time I think of it. Your friends define you too, I guess 🙂

 

 

He said to me: “once a juggler always a juggler, once a trapeze artist, always a trapeze artist.” He was right, of course, as he often is. He is a juggler who was a pedagogical director of the Circus Space in London at the time, now the National Center for Circus Arts, where he worked for 16 years before moving on.

 

 

I was becoming a company owner and director, starting to tour our creations worldwide for the next ten years. We were still both a juggler and trapeze artist. Especially in professions where the element of performance is so strong and total, when you train daily and perform with your skills in front of people, you become what you do. 

 

 

It’s the same for mountain climbing as Mark F. Twight says so beautifully: 
“Indeed, a man becomes his work. Rather, what we pay attention to and deeply explore, what we practice hardest, eventually defines us.”

 

I agree. Tonight I dreamt again that the book I will write has to be about what I learned from 30 years of circus. It’s true that what I learned still lives in me and I live by it daily.