Morality Play

Time to howl.......

The stage for the play is set.  We have a chorus (the press), we have numerous plot lines, we have heroes and villains, we have Denver as the setting, and we have a very large audience.  Now the curtain goes up, and Coyote wonders, what exactly will we see? What is the title of this play?  Is it a tragedy or a comedy?  Who is the author?  What moral are we supposed to learn?  Why do we put on shows like this every four years?

Here is the most important thing to remember as we watch the play: it isn't personal.  It feels awfully personal.  It will feel extremely personal if we get arrested.  For some it felt very personal that Hillary didn't win.  Many will feel betrayed if Obama keeps moving to the right.  Lots of people will feel thrilled at the spectacle, the pomp, and the excitement of the convention.  Some will feel personally vindicated.  Others will feel abandoned.

But Coyote asks us to keep clearly before our minds this one fact:  it is a play, and it isn't personal.  It will be such a good play that we will, at times, be totally caught up in it.  It will be such a good play that, at times, we the audience will feel as if we are part of the the scenes and acts.  That is what a great play does: it draws us in so well that it makes us forget, for a time, that it is theater.  We get absorbed in the drama.  We become part of the drama.  As we should.

But it isn't personal.  We don't hunt down an actor who played Hamlet, and ask him why he was so mean to Ophelia.  He was playing a role.  It isn't personal.  We don't put the chief Puritan  inquisitor in "The Crucible" on trial for murder.  He was playing a role.  It isn't personal.  The key Coyote fact to remember is that all life is a stage, and we are but actors on it.  All life.  And especially these every four year extravaganzas.  If we take it personally, then we miss the play.  If we take it personally, then we lose perspective.  If we take it personally, then we lose the lessons the author is trying to get us to learn.  Focus on the themes.  Focus on the symbols.  Focus on the plot twists.  Focus on the comedy and the tragedy.  Keep our eyes on the play.  

If we can do that, then maybe,  just maybe, we will learn a bit about who we are.  The drama of the convention is a mirror in which we see our reflection.  Will we see the mirror, or ourselves?

CoyoteJ, reflecting only on his next nap.