A new school year beckons. This week fresh faced children, all neat and well-scrubbed, are being dressed in oversized brand-new uniforms to have their pictures taken by proud parents across the country. My own grandson starts sixth-form college tomorrow. Like many others he is taking another small but important step towards adulthood. In his play As You Like It, William Shakespeare gifted the world with the phrase, “All the world’s a stage.” Or in its full version, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” What he is alluding to is that we all enter the ‘stage’ for the play of life. During our time on stage we play different roles, and inevitably, in the end we make our own exit. We start as an infant, helpless and in need of others. Then we become, often reluctantly, school children. Next, we are the passionate lover, and the ambitious, honour seeking soldier (as he calls it). Then we mature into prosperous, wise middle age, before our advancing years weaken our strengths. Till we finally reach our second childhood in dependant old age. Throughout this process we play different roles in the lives of those with whom we interact. This is not said, as it was in As You Like It, as a lament. It’s obvious to anyone who has been through some of these stages that, that is what we do. So let’s embrace it, own it, and play each role with aplomb. And let others playout their own roles too, after all this play of life is not a monologue.
Also notice how Shakespear is drawing our attention to the fact that, change is the only constant in life. You don’t actually need to just look at the broad sweep of your life to see this. Change is a constant feature of our lives and is one of the three truths about existence. One moment, one snapshot, changes into another, constantly, all the time. But even as you reflect on that idea, also notice that the sense of who you are is unchanging. Speak to anyone in later life and they will tell you that, yes maybe their body is different, maybe their interests are different, but their sense of self is unchanged. This points to the second of the three truths about life. This one is so obvious that most of us miss it or just ignore it, but the second truth is, you exist. And the place where you exist is in the now. This is the third truth; now is all there is. You can look at pictures of yourself on your first day at primary school, or your first day at senior school, your first day at sixth form, or your first day at university or work. It doesn’t matter as soon as the picture has been taken you are no longer in that now, you are in a new now, but you are, still most definitely, in now.
You can access these three inescapable truths about life in any waking or dreaming moment –
- You exist,
- Now is all there is, and
- Everything changes.
These are so obvious we often just look right past them to whatever is happening in our experience. Most often we only notice them when someone like Shakespeare or Eckhart Tolle, with his book The Power of Now, draws our attention to them. These three truths represent the underlying structure of our experience, and with just these we can build a new paradigm, a new understanding of reality. As I said we do usually miss them, because we are so focused on the content of our experience rather than the structure of it. But the paradox is, if we choose to focus more on the structure of our experience we will gain more power over the content of it too.
For now, simply notice what the Bard is asking us to see. Enjoy your time on stage, make yours a glorious performance. Know that some of the other actors may leave and others will join, and that’s okay, because you simply exist in an ever changing now.
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” William Shakespeare
