Who’s writing your life script?

We all live our lives based on assumptions – beliefs we are sure are true about what we are capable of doing, what is acceptable for us to do, and what we think is inevitable. So where do those assumptions come from?

I thought of this while attending a play last week.

The central characters were an 80-year old man and a 70-something woman, who meet in a dog park. It was sweet, it was touching … and it went nowhere. Well, actually, she went off to Milan to hear an opera at the world-famous opera house he had always dreamed of visiting, but never had. He stayed on the park bench.

We could focus on the theme of people who dream but never take action, but for me it was this recurrent theme that two older people have all the elements of a fine romance, but never follow through on them, at least within the play, movie, or television program we see. One of them dies, or goes off to Milan, or the moon, but we never see them embracing. We never, ever, see them consummating their love.

How many of us accept this kind of ending without question?

My question was: how old was the playwright?

A broader question is this: whose point of view are we learning? When we see, hear, or read a drama, we are being moved emotionally (if it is any good). The creator is giving us a snapshot of life – his or her life, NOT OURS.

As I pointed out to a friend who criticized my move back to my home town after years in California, “You Can’t Go Home Again” is a book title, not a universal truth. She was shocked and surprised.

Everything we consume – not just food, but media in all forms – affects us. We need to pay attention to the beliefs and attitudes we are taking into our interior just as we are concerned about the foods we take into our bellies. So when you are entranced, or even hypnotized, by a work of art, pause and ask yourself, “Who created this?” And then consider the following questions:
How old was this person? What gender? May or may not be relevant.

What culture or sub-culture does this person represent? (Be careful here; sometimes we are most blind to assumptions that arise from our own culture, and therefore prone to accept them easily.)

What trends do you see or hear over and over again? As I’ve pointed out, according to the media, older people don’t make love. Repetition doesn’t necessarily make a concept true.

Anything else you can find out about the creator may help you to appreciate the work in its context, without necessarily making it your context. Because what you believe is what you will live.

We are what we eat holds true here, too.