Breaking Character

William Shakespeare famously told us that the world is one huge stage and we are all actors, who enter and exit. Our job is to play our many roles and responsibilities well, and in a life time, we have seven stages.

Great, the renowned dramatist considers life to be one complex, continuous drama and all of us must play our roles well. So now that we’re all a part of this drama of life, we fit into characters or personalities. In each stage of life, our character plays so many roles! Right now, I play the role of a daughter, a sister, a friend, a classmate, a student, a neighbor, a distant relative. The more relationships and networks I have or had, the more roles I will have to play. I could be doing two acts at once, like while sitting in class and acting as a student but also listening to my friend’s wild adventure from the previous weekend and being a friend. It’s all great, the roles and responsibilities… the way you act to fulfill them make up who you are. This becomes a mould… Your core that people recognize you by. It becomes You.

Shakespeare however, did not mention anything about breaking character. After all, if the world is a stage and life is a drama… don’t the characters need a break? Don’t we need to cease to maintain the illusion or character we are playing?

There have definitely been some days when you just want to stop playing the same roles and do some things differently. Our life is a routine. I need to go to college every day, can’t change that. I don’t want to. But on some days, some of us would like to take a step back and ponder. We’d like to break out of character and perhaps take a day off! Or ditch our friends and eat alone for a change. Or take rolled up chart papers and pretend to have a light saber duel. Sadly, these molds that we are fitted into have become too stiff. Anything you do that doesn’t fit your personalised mold, would seem very unexpected from you and you’ll be followed by remarks like ‘What is wrong with you?’ ‘Is everything alright?’ ‘That is weird’. Why? why can’t things be a little free flow every once in awhile? Playing our cards carefully can be so exhausting!

Today, everything seems to matter a little too much… the way we text someone or the way we talk to a person shows hidden signs of your relationship with them. The way you react to a certain situation matters, you can’t over do it or not react at all. Your actions matter, they have…well, dire consequences. Maintaining these fixed patterns is so taxing, how do you expect someone not to suffer from burnouts?

I wish we could start emphasizing on breaking character. It’s a wonderful thing! We would be so much more refreshed to go back and play our parts before we leave the stage.