"All the world's a stage,
And all men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts."
As You Like It, William Shakespeare
Life is a Dream. When I was in third year college, my professor talked about this play by the Spanish dramatist Calderón de la Barca of the Baroque period. "What is life? A madness. What is life? A illusion, a shadow, a story, and the greatest good is little enough, for all life is a dream."
(You'd think it's amazing that I remember all these details given the fact that I don't pay much attention in class because that I am perpetually sleepy but no, I am currently copying the lines from the de la Barca play from an amazing book I am reading entitled "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaardner. So there.)
Life is a dream. The conflict in this play lies in the main character's situation wherein he wakes up from a terrible dream although not knowing whether or not it was real. He is then convinced that the world in which has woken up in is the dream world. A story reminiscent of Inception.
People wake up every morning convinced they are in the "real world" per se. But what IS the real world? Can we sleep as paupers then wake up as royalty then next day? Which then would be deemed the real world?
The real world, based on people's constant rambling and complaining, is the realm wherein we are splashed with the harshness of reality. Where we are made to work 9 to 5 for a living that will never seem to be enough to satisfy worldly desires. Where we are made to think that a life of feeding your passions is less important than a life of feeding your avarice.
Life truly IS madness. Life IS but a stage. We are merely actors, merely dreamers. With this gift we have been bestowed with, what shall we dream up? What shall be the lines that we will deliver as we play our part in the grand scheme of life? What world will we wake up in?
Will you be content to live in the real world? Or the life that you have the power to dream of? The power to transcend from this dream into the reality of your schemes?
P.S. Sometimes I think I read too much, write too much or watch waaay too many movies. Feel free to tell me what you think.
:)
