The Show Must Go On.

Watching the movie "Water for Elephants" I really found myself at a crossroads. Did I like the movie? Did I hate it? Which road was I going to take? I often find myself at this point generally 30-45 minutes into a film. You can only imagine how annoying it is to watch an entire film and the last 5 minutes completely change my decision.

This idea immediately made my mind up for me:

"Life is a show. You simply must play your part because everything is an illusion anyway."

Society is fake, an illusion. We do what we're told. Be who we're told. Act how we're told. For what? Who knows. Possibly to not be noticed. Are we all that afraid of ourselves that we just play our part? It's not that the idea angers me, it frightens.

Looking back at the past 5 or 6 years of my life, it could be completely different had I made other decisions, done what I was told. At church they always use the 'railroad' reference saying how 'off path' you get from a few simple, alleged, wrong decisions. Are those decisions really wrong? Can we ever end up in the wrong place? Or is it simply how we react to life. Even still...is that reaction just part of our illusion, what/who we want others to think we are?

This made me flash back to days when I was involved in theater. During rehearsal when you are 'off book' and forget a line you call out "LINE" and someone reads the first few words to get you back on track. That's nice and all, but during a performance you can't just scream out "LINE" and have someone rushing to the rescue. You must make it work, get from A to B without throwing the show off course. Maybe life is a show. We never got rehearsals so others than have been through the 'scenes' tell us what our lines should be. The only problem is...the scenes can never be the same for two people.

I'm not sure why I found this so intriguing, but I did. Is life really just a show? A game? We go through life with all these different influences telling us what to do, who to be, what to like, even love. Parts are written, costumes designed, all we have to do is jump on the stage and give our best performance. Excited for opening night?

You decide.