Be the leaf. Trust the Water

Nathan Schulz
May 10
5 min read

I cancelled the live show.

There. I've said it. Co-Stars: Storytime LIVE! would not be performing at The Raven this Anywhere Festival season. And if you've been following along — if you saw that post with the suitcases and the words *"the timing isn't right"* — then you already knew something was coming. I just wasn't ready to say it out loud yet.

So here it is, out loud.

We weren't selling tickets. Six bookings by the end of the season. Nothing in the weeks before it. And before you say anything — yes, I tried. I did everything I could think of. The social media posts, the paid ads, the content, the campaign. I showed up. I kept showing up. And still, the seats stayed empty.

That's a particular kind of quiet that every creative knows. The work is ready. The room isn't.

And if you've never worked in theatre a day in your life — you still know that quiet. The project that didn't land. The idea nobody bit on. The plan you believed in completely, that the world just wasn't ready for yet. We've all been there. The stage just looks different for each of us.

---

I've been doing this long enough to know when something won't budge. And yes — I could talk about walls. For a long time, walls were exactly my language. I'd find the cracks. Exploit them. Force a way through where one wasn't really meant to be. And sometimes it worked. But it always cost something. Energy. Time. Pieces of yourself you don't always get back.

Then I sat beside a stream. And a leaf taught me something no wall ever could.

And years later, Shannon Lee (Bruce Lees daughter) wrote a book called "Be water, my friend - the true teachings of Bruce Lee" which confirmed what I'd already seen in that water — that the most powerful thing you can do when something blocks your path isn't to find the crack. It's to flow around it. Patient. Persistent. Without losing your direction.

Water doesn't exploit. It adapts. And it always finds its way.

---

About seven or eight years ago I found myself sitting quietly by a little stream. I won't name the place — some places deserve to stay private. My mind was running, the way a creative mind does when it won't slow down. Too many questions. Too many *what ifs* crowding the edges.

I believe in *what if* as a question. I think it's one of the most powerful tools a creative person has. But that day, the what ifs weren't guiding me anywhere. They were just circling.

So I stopped. And I watched the water.

The stream fed into a small pool — a mini lake, in my mind — before continuing on further down. And at the bottom of that pool I could see leaves. Some brown and dying. Most still green, still carrying life in them.

Then a green leaf fell from above and hit the surface.

Its ripple was small. Barely there. And the leaf — full of colour, full of life — sank. Quickly, quietly, it settled at the bottom of the pool and didn't move.

I sat with that for a moment. *Why would something with so much life in it sink? Leaves are supposed to float. And if it was heavy enough to sink, why didn't it make a bigger ripple?*

Then another leaf fell. This one brown. Dry. By every measure, lifeless.

It hit the same spot.

And it floated.

Its ripple moved all the way across the pond — big at first, then smaller and smaller as it reached the edges, the way all ripples do when they've done what they came to do. The leaf turned this way and that, unhurried, until something in the current caught it. It didn't know where it was going. It didn't need to. The water knew. And it carried that leaf exactly where it was meant to be — a little further down, where I watched a dove collect it for her nest.

A lifeless leaf. The biggest ripple. A perfect destination.

I've never forgotten that.

---

The green leaf held on. It was full of life and intention and probably had very strong feelings about where it should end up. And it sank.

The brown leaf let go. It trusted the current. And it rippled across the whole pond and ended up exactly where it was needed.

I'm not always good at being the brown leaf. Most creatives aren't. We hold on. We push. We convince ourselves that effort and intention are enough to keep us afloat, that if we just try harder we'll break through. But sometimes all that holding on just makes us heavier.

Years later I'd find a version of this same truth in Bruce Lee's *Striking Thoughts* — his philosophy of moving like water, of yielding not as weakness but as wisdom. Of carving your own path not by force but by flow. Lee didn't invent this idea — Confucius walked near a river and said *"Is it not always flowing on like this stream, never ceasing, day or night?"* He wasn't talking about rivers. He was talking about how to live.

I'd already learned it from a leaf. But it was good to know I wasn't alone in the thinking.

---

So when Co-Stars didn't sell tickets, and the current stalled, and life was demanding more of me than I'd anticipated — I had a choice.

Keep forcing. Or let go and find the flow.

I talked it through with a close and dear friend. They didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. They didn't need to. But there's something about saying a decision out loud to someone who truly sees you that makes it real. That makes it yours. And sitting with them, I felt it — this wasn't defeat. It was direction.

Every creative hits a moment like this. Where something doesn't land the way you planned and the silence feels like failure. But failure and timing are not the same thing. And accepting your responsibilities — to your work, to the people depending on you, to yourself — isn't giving up. It's growing up. It's what the brown leaf does when it stops fighting the surface and trusts the water.

The preparation wasn't wasted. It never is. It's just waiting for the right current.

And here's what I've come to believe — we are all creatives. Every single one of us. Because every single one of us is the director and producer of our own show. The show is your life. The stage is wherever you're standing right now. And the most important creative decision you will ever make isn't about a project or a performance — it's about how you choose to respond when the plan doesn't work and the room stays empty.

Let go. Trust the current. Make the ripple.

Be like water.

....

If you want to know what's coming next for Co-Stars, the details are over on The Merchant Post. But honestly, that's not really why I wrote this.

I wrote this for every creative who has ever held on too tight.

You know what to do.

— Nathan

Theatre, just not as you know it.