Pretense

All the world is a stage? I beg to differ. We are just pretending, here on the stage. Between the proscenium walls and well embedded within the playwright’s godlike words. 

A foreign agent drives us and friendly agents direct us, guide us, and tell us when to go on and when to come off. Where to stand in the wings until our entrance and how to take our bows at the end of it all. Which props to use and how not to upstage our fellows. The microcosm of fact and fantasy compels as we sit at a child’s tea party of nowhere toast and nothing jam. It’s all pretense. Pretend and fantasy.

We are actors who strut and promenade ourselves upon the stage, delivering our lines with faux emotions and the pseudo certainty of our characters’ deepest worth, darkest tragedy, fiercest humor, and greatest triumph and despair, in a charade of meaning devoid of convictions. Yet such do we believe. And strive to convince. And to convict. And to become what we portray. Thus we act.

It’s all pretense, in the end. Like everyone in all other walks of life everywhere and for all times immemorial and in all places immortal. It is pretense. Pretend. Make believe. It’s not real.

Can you say it is not true? Art mirrors life, we are told. One stands in reflection of the other. One shakes a fist at or stares in awe of the other, not knowing what to make of it. Not knowing what to care, how to feel, or where to turn in our own pretense of life. Sometimes life mirrors art.

Pretense. It is all a child’s game. Such is life. Such is the stage. Such is everything. Which is pretending? Which is real? The actors don’t know. 

We are… Pretense.