“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,” – William Shakespeare
We come into this world, clawing at the air, crying desperately for food… for milk… for affection. We grow, we play in the sandbox, we graduate, we get jobs, we marry, we continue our legacies, we die. During which time we laugh, we cry, we smile, we love, we hate, it happens to just about every human that has ever walked God’s green Earth.
We have cycles of joy, where life is fruitful, where life is happy… then other periods where we wonder if there is some divine curse placed on us, where the Universe and everything in it conspires to ruin us.
We all find different ways to cope… some through substances, some through activity, some through sex, some through human interaction or any outlet of their choosing. As for myself, I choose to look at life as a storybook, which in some ways it is.
In some regards, life is a long story. With many excerpts that would make for exciting chapters, divided by long stretches of mediocrity.
Whether good things are happening to me, or completely terrible things happen, I think of it as a novel. And what is a novel without some conflict or drama every now and then. The best stories in history were filled with pain and sorrow, which were inevitably met with some form of victory that is now celebrated.
Just about every story that has ever taken place has taken place on Earth. There are infinite numbers of stories that have taken place, some that were told, some that were untold that will forever lie in the unopened pages of history.
At the end, if you see your life – the good and bad – as a story, as a character’s journey in a novel, you can look back at both pleasantries and unpleasantries as stories.
I like to imagine that some day in the future, technology will exist that will allow people to view the past and watch our stories. Whenever I am going through a difficult situation, I like to think that a descendant far into the future is watching my struggle similar to a movie, experiencing a plethora of emotions, likely rooting for me to succeed. Most importantly, I have the pen, and I intend to write one hell of a novel!
-J
Paradise Forgotten 