All The World`s A Stage

Miniature painting style of Rajasthan

All the world`s a stage, and all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.- William Shakespeare

The above extract has been taken from the play “As you like it” by the literary genius William Shakespeare. These lines have inspired those who have a way of looking, at life’s deeper meaning. It wistfully engages many to ponder, that this world is merely a stage and our life, as an ongoing series of acts. The works I create, deal with the mundane and daily life. Where I try to question myself and thus, evolve as a being.
I therefore, empathize to this fact, that this so called Real World(material World), where everything’s buzzing in this space, with thousands of people in different chaotic situations, is eventually surreal ,it is actually a performing stage, where everyone has an important role to play , a role to enact, a situation to deal with.
In the end this purely leaves me thinking, we are fitted perfectly in stereotyped situations, where we behave like puppets, thus follow a kind of social order (the behavior that we can call ourselves civilized) and then the feeling of satisfaction engulfs us, at a point where we are able to live up to the expectations of our society. I like to touch upon and comment on those aspects of our society where the human value has gone down, reduced to the size of rubbish i.e. use and throw. (Thus, emotions and people are being used and things which are basically made to be used are being preserved). This gives way to a very materialistic approach, which adds to those events that degenerate our society. By adapting and keeping standards of materialistic objects, our generation has become, plastic. Thus, being subjugated, to be a part of a herd and which moves in the same direction, with the fear of rejection.
Everyone who enters our life is there to teach us something, in a way to unfold new dimensions within us. We, at one point need to realize that we act; we fall, at the hands of those peculiar norms that are created for us, to make us feel liberated and free. Life is a manifestation of purely ourselves, we create; we degenerate. Thus, we fall; we rise.
Is it, not plastic to act like puppets, at the hands of few who set the trends? The impact of social media (Television, films, advertisements etc.) is far reaching; it is drastically encompassing our country. This is giving way, to certain norms and rules which our generation is following like a herd. Not knowing, where they are heading exactly like those oysters in the poem, ‘Walrus and the Carpenter’, by Lewis Carroll.

In the end I would like to conclude,” I am not this hair, I am not this skin; I am the soul that lives within. –Rumi.

-Akanksha Khanna