Ten Minute Talk - "Enjoying The Performance"

This talk suggests that the most magnificent performance that we will ever witness is the unfolding of our own lives. How would our experience change if we manage to see our life as a play? How different would our life be if instead of taking it seriously we learned to enjoy its ups and downs in the same way we enjoy the see-saw plots of complex dramas? Very different indeed!

Transcript

This 10 minute talk is titled,

Enjoying the Performance.

All the worlds a stage,

And all the men and women are merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances.

And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare.

He is enlightened who joins in this play of life,

Knowing it as play.

For man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

Alan Watts.

If Shakespeare is right,

And all the worlds a stage,

And all of her inhabitants are merely actors,

Then life would best be described as a dramatic play.

This begs an important question.

If different ways of looking open up different ways of being in the world,

How would our experience of life change if we take Shakespeare up on his invitation to see the world as a stage?

What would happen if we were to,

If only for a moment,

Experience our lives the way an actor inhabits a role in a play?

How different would our life be if instead of taking it seriously,

We learned to enjoy its ups and downs in the same way we enjoy the seesaw plots of complex dramas?

If the Alan Watts quote with which I began is any indication,

Life would be very different indeed in Watts' view,

Which I share.

A great deal of suffering stems from taking ourselves,

And with this our lives,

Too seriously.

When we treat things seriously,

We begin to believe that things actually really are serious.

But the problem with this view is that from a more cosmic perspective,

Things are not serious.

They are also not unserious.

Things simply are.

As we begin to zoom out from the minutiae of our daily lives,

Our little problems and squabbles and even our big challenges and failures,

Things begin to look less and less important.

Once our perspective shifts enough for us to create the separation that is needed to become less identified with the arising and passing away of our experiences,

We are finally able to sit back and enjoy the most magnificent show on earth,

The unfolding of our own lives.

As we begin to look at our lives as a play of dancing sensations,

Emotions,

And experiences,

We may begin to inquire about the nature of the drama that is unfolding in the little corner of the universe that is us.

Is the play of our life more like a drama,

A comedy,

Or a tragedy?

If you're anything like me,

Your cosmic drama is likely to cut across many genres.

At times,

It may seem like our lives just offer up tragic situation after tragic situation.

It may appear as if we are cursed with things moving from bad to worse at dizzying speeds.

We viscerally come to understand the fortunes of Santiago,

Hemingway's leading character in his beloved Old Man and the Sea.

After weeks of unsuccessful fishing,

Santiago is decreed to be salau,

Which as Hemingway beautifully translates from the Spanish,

Is the worst form of unlucky.

Like Santiago,

We too often feel as if we and our lives are salaus.

When we see ourselves as salau,

We try to make sense of our misfortunes by searching for answers that will not be given.

We look back at our own holy streak of bad luck and ask,

Why me?

While when we are salau,

It feels as if we are cursed forever.

Our lives are also full of moments when things flow with more ease.

In fact,

There are times in life when things seem to fall into place effortlessly,

As if following some preordained plan.

If moments of sustained difficulty remind us of Hemingway's Santiago.

The times in life when everything comes together to work to one's benefit remind us of another Santiago,

Paulo Coelho's adventurous boy in his famous novel,

The Alchemist.

Coelho Santiago doesn't quite know what life has in store for him,

But as he begins to walk his path of self-discovery,

He notices that all will naturally fall into place if only he follows the signs or omens that life has left for him.

As he goes deeper and deeper into his spiritual journey,

Coelho Santiago comes to understand that the world conspires in his favor when he entrusts himself to the flow of life.

In a sense,

Our lives unfold between the polarities of the two Santiago's.

Hemingway's and Coelho's respective Santiago's reveal themselves not as diametrically opposed characters,

But as two sides of the same coin.

From this perspective,

The cursed Santiago of the old man and the sea emerges as the yin-like shadow that balances out the yang-like brightness of the blessed Santiago of the Alchemist.

Although we would surely prefer to live out our lives in the magical world that Coelho's boy inhabits,

We eventually come to understand that the universe,

And by extension our own existence,

Includes not only magic and bliss,

But also tragedy and difficulty.

With time,

We can come to appreciate that we can best make sense of Coelho's adventurous boy if we have a less lucky chap with whom to compare him to.

This is where Hemingway Santiago comes in.

By coming to see the cruelty of the life of Hemingway Santiago,

We can begin to appreciate the luck and grace that blessed the life of Coelho's Santiago.

And so it is in our own lives.

Like Hollywood movies,

The play of our lives needs a villain,

A plot twist that puts us,

The protagonist of the movie of our lives,

In an impossible bind.

Most writers know this all too well,

A story that lacks dark and difficult moments is not much of a story at all.

A superhero's tale without a supervillain is flat and uninteresting.

The great stories of humankind are filled with perils,

Death,

Loss,

And grief.

Jesus overcame lashings,

Crucifixion,

And death,

Only to then triumphantly rise back from the dead.

Before attaining enlightenment,

The Buddha endured the seemingly unending temptations of Mara,

A demonic spirit of Buddhist lore.

We see the same pattern in contemporary stories.

It is the specter of death by kryptonite that makes Superman's story relatable and interesting.

Batman's story is hardly compelling without the Joker continuously threatening to append the order that Gotham's protector strives so hard to keep.

We admire Rosa Parks not only because she refused to sit in the back of the bus,

But also and perhaps more crucially because she was willing to endure the indignity of arrest in order to fight for the equality that she so strongly believed in.

What the great stories and storytellers reveal is that the most interesting tales are those that contain not only bliss and joy,

But also loss and challenge.

The most arresting stories are those that present their characters with a seemingly endless parade of obstacles and challenges.

The greatest happiness comes not from unearned joy,

But from hard-fought victories.

The human spirit is at its best when it triumphs against extraordinary odds.

This is perhaps best exemplified by Victor Franco,

Who in managing to find meaning in the midst of the horrors of the Holocaust,

Reminds us that true purpose comes not from the ease that characterizes an unchallenging life,

But from learning to find beauty in what are seemingly the ugliest of places.

When we come to see our life as a play,

We are able to appreciate that the twists and turns that the movie of our life takes are not causes for consternation.

They are a reason for celebration.

It is only through enduring challenge and suffering that our life stories become textured,

Beautiful,

Compelling,

And interesting.

When the Buddha first escaped the comforts of his princely palace,

He was confronted by the three heavenly messengers of aging,

Illness,

And death.

But why are aging,

Illness,

And death considered heavenly when it seems that all they bring is pain?

They are heavenly because they reveal the fragile nature of our own lives.

And in so doing,

They remind us that every second of this sweet earth is precious.

This adds a sense of poignancy and urgency to our lives that,

When properly mined,

Allows us to revel not only in the beauty of life,

But also in its supposed ugliness.

For this one wild and precious life that we have been gifted amounts to the most compelling movie that we will ever behold.

It reminds us that the most incredible adventure we will ever embark on is not a journey to the bottom of the ocean,

The heights of Everest,

Or the unfathomable darkness of space.

Our most amazing adventure is the one that we are already taking part in,

The story of our lives.