Introduction

T. S. Eliot wrote that in Four Quartets. Robert Redford paraphrased it in an interview:

“The only thing is, in life, The Trying, because that is where the action is.”

That line has been following me around lately, like a persistent production assistant who keeps quietly reminding you you’re late for the next scene.

Right now, it is very real for me because of a film I had the privilege to help bring to life: “Paul and Greg and Amelia“, written and directed by Michael Pomeroy, a rising independent filmmaker whose 2022 film “The Rest of Your Life” has already started to turn heads.

We are in the middle of a massive Trying Effort. Capital T. Capital E.

We have submitted Paul and Greg and Amelia for a chance to be screened at Sundance this January, the festival Robert Redford founded. Around 4,000 films will be submitted. Somewhere in the range of 10 to 15 will be selected in the category we are going for.

Statistically speaking, the odds are somewhere between “you win the lottery” and “you actually stick to your New Year’s resolution.”

So why do it?

Because, as Redford said, the action is in the trying.

The strange sanity of unreasonable odds

Nobody makes an independent film because it is a rational, risk-adjusted decision.

You do it because something about the story grabs you by the collar and says,

“You. Yes, you. Help me exist.”

That is what Paul and Greg and Amelia did to Michael, to the cast, and to those of us who joined him on the journey.

And here is what I have noticed along the way: The real magic is not in the Sundance submission confirmation email. It is in the hundreds of tiny human moments that happen long before anyone in Park City ever sees a frame.

• A line reading that suddenly shifts from “good” to “honest,” and everyone on set feels it at the same time.
• The quiet five minutes after a long shooting day when the crew is exhausted, but nobody really wants to leave, because the world you just created together still feels more vivid than the real one.
• The conversation over coffee where someone says, “I have never told anyone this, but this character reminds me of…” and you realize the story just brushed against a deeper layer of their life.

This is the trying that Eliot was talking about. That is our business.

Story as a window into the human condition

What draws me to filmmaking is very similar to what drew me into the insights and research world:

We are trying to open little windows into the human condition.

With Paul and Greg and Amelia, the goal was not simply to entertain. It was to:

• Reveal something true about how people connect, drift apart, and find their way back to themselves.
• Help us understand others just a bit more than we did before.
• And in the process, catch an unexpected reflection of ourselves in the story.

When creative people come together around a film, a product, or a piece of research, the same thing happens. We build something that did not exist yesterday, and in building it, we discover parts of ourselves and each other that were hidden.

If you zoom out, that is what most meaningful work really is. Not just output. Not just deliverables. But shared exploration.

Letting go of the part that is “not our business.”

Here is the uncomfortable part:

We can pour our best thinking, our time, our money, our talent and our hearts into this film, and Sundance might still say, “Thank you, not this year.”

That part is not our business.

Our business is:

• Doing the work with integrity.
• Being brave enough to tell the story as truthfully as we can.
• Treating collaborators as co-creators, not just resources.
• Showing up, again and again, when the odds say we are slightly delusional.

In a world that is obsessed with outcomes, awards, funding rounds, view counts, and KPIs, Eliot’s advice feels almost radical:

Focus on the trying.

That does not mean outcomes do not matter. They do. If Sundance calls, trust me, nobody is going to say, “No thanks, we are just here for the journey.”

But it does mean that the uncertainty of the result does not cancel out the value of the journey.

Bringing it back to you and your work

You do not have to submit a film to Sundance to be in a Trying Effort.

If you are:

• Building a new product inside a large organization
• Launching a startup
• Championing a new way to listen to customers
• Or just reinventing what your own career could look like over the next 10 years

you are right in the middle of your own version of this story.

The question is not only, “Will it work?”

The deeper question is, “Who are we becoming in the trying?”

That is where the action is. That is where the artistry lives. That is where collaboration turns into something more than task sharing and becomes a shared act of courage.