Calendar Books by Allen James - Daily Reading - "A Graduate's Daily Guide to Success"

Calendar Books by Allen James' reading for May 14th from "A Graduate's Daily Guide to Success" ..... "Take an acting class" (James, 2012).

William Shakespeare penned over 500 years ago in his comedy, "As You Like It", one of his many most quoted lines....

"All the world's a stage,
And all the 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, II:vii).

Life is a unique comedy, drama, and tragedy packed into, if we're lucky, 80 some odd years on this planet called Earth. The roles we play have been scripted well to assure a fairly good performance. We go through each day living a preordained, fated life, where we are actors, following scripts, despite our preferring to believe we are living unique existences.

If you've ever taken an acting class, you realize how true Shakespeare's words can be. Jaques' monologue pulls the rug out from under us. When we come to understand others may be playing the same role, reading the same lines as we, we see how insignificant many of our actions are.

Having an ability to play your role well is the key. Shakespeare goes on to explain how important this is in his tragedy, "Hamlet", when he says through the character of Hamlet,

"Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your player
do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the\
air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the
very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split
the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of
nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise..." (Hamlet, III:ii)

Throughout our lives we experience many interactions with many predictable results and a few unpredictable ones. Advances in psychology show most personality traits and types and their interactions are in finite variation, many unforeseen by laymen, thus taken to be unique experiences. At a higher level, the vast majority of it all follows scripts describable in a paragraph or two, filling out this monologue even further. There will, of course, be a minority of outliers, people and etiology. Details differ with the interpretations of the actors.

Take an acting class...it can help us through the eccentricities thrown our way.

Keep looking up. : ) AJ