All the world's a stage

 

One of the best experiences of my life was studying my first Shakespearean text - Macbeth, which, for those who don't know, describes the chaos that ensues when an army general, motivated by an equivocatory prophecy by three witches and a desire to prove his virility, sets out to kill the King and take the throne. In the play, one passage left me, and probably many other people reeling. It appears towards the end of the play, when upon finding out about the death of his wife, Macbeth mulls over the meaninglessness of life, describing it as a "walking shadow" and "a poor player that "struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more." And while studying it, I realized something astonishing. 

You don't matter. At all. Not one bit. 

To yourself that is. 

Lived independent of other lives, your life doesn't matter one bit. It'd be wasted actually. Because we all exist as mere puzzle pieces, forming one big beautiful picture but also, complementing the shapes of other people and contributing to their lives. We are pawns in the hands in the hands of a chess grandmaster, slabs of granite in the hands of a sculptor and characters in a grand and exciting play. 

The importance of this understanding is that it hints at the need for collective action. The idea that we ought to complement each other's existences for them to be meaningful. How this meaning is thereby derived is a complicated, never-ending story. Perhaps because our shared lived experiences provide a bigger basis for existence and the adoption of certain practices. Maybe we create meanings to our lives by sharing them with others - Filling the lives of others with the things that we are each assigned by the grand artist. Who knows? 

You exist for a reason. You serve a purpose on this planet - A very important one, I must add, because of the ripple effect that your purpose will have. Consider for example that if you change someone's mind about rape culture today, you could prevent them from an infinite number of undesirable scenarios - Committing rape, sexually harassing someone, etc. And that too prevents more undesirable scenarios for the would-have-been victim who would otherwise have imposed his trauma on someone else…The possibilities are limitless. 

In short, you exist to serve a purpose that is much bigger than you are. And the purpose that you serve exists to give meaning to life. 

Our lives are, in many ways, intertwined, fulfilling each other's purposes and in so doing, fulfilling the purposes of those that will encounter those whose purposes we fulfil and ultimately, fulfilling a grand purpose that human beings have yet to realize - One that perhaps is too big for us to ever realize. One that might not even exist! 

Who knows? 

"All the world's a stage, 

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exists and their entrances, 

And one man in his time plays many parts, 

His acts being seven ages."

~ As You Like It, William Shakespeare

Sincerely, 

Muku

Photo by Alberto Bigoni on Unsplash