Stages of Life

What makes you feel good, feel alive? We all have a sense that feeling alive is synonymous with feeling good. Everyone wants to feel good. But when it comes right down to it, feeling good means little more for most of us than wishing to be entertained. When your work day is done, all you want to do is kick back and turn on the CD player because a good strong dose of music is going to make you feel alive again. Or maybe it's movies, or TV, or the telephone, or the Internet that gives you that feeling. What did they used to call TV? The plug-in drug? That was before all the plug-in drugs we now have at our disposal. Or, should I say, the plug-ins that have us at their disposal?

It's not that these things are somehow evil. The troublesome thing about how we feel good about ourselves is how dependent on externals we become, how passive our state is. And this passivity isn't limited to mechanical things, though it sometimes looks that way. We can be just as dependent on "natural" things - something as natural as the weather.

Did you ever notice how some people's mood, their frame of mind, is entirely dependent on the weather? If the sun isn't shining or it's raining or it's cold or hot or humid or windy, they're not happy and everything is wrong. They don't happen to like the conditions that life throws at them, and how they feel about those conditions is all that's important to them. It's all about what's happening outside and how they feel about it. The weather affects their mood, their ambitions for the day, their willingness to do anything. It's no different than being hooked on DVDs at night. They're living lives that are inside-out. To use a theatrical metaphor, they're mistaking the scenery of their lives - the externals - for the reality of what life is really about.

You want to know what life is really about? It's simple. It's about action, about being aware enough of yourself and your surroundings that you know what action to take. Shakespeare was right on the money when he said all the world's a stage. And he wasn't just speaking metaphorically either.

When an actor steps out on stage, what he's doing isn't dependent in any but the slightest way with the scenery. It's something he should beware of bumping into. The scenery is there to support what he's doing, to reflect his actions and the playwright's intentions for the benefit of someone else.