All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

By proclaiming that “World is a stage” as trivial and inconsequential it may be, but each man’s life can be drawn in parallel to a play being enacted on a stage. Even though the entries and exits of an actor is pre-determined in a play, a man’s birth is his entry which might be considered as a case of mere accident and his death is the exit which is certain and inevitable. Between both the events, people play their unscripted roles in the lives of the significant others whose destiny has been inter-woven, the ones he meets during the course of his lifetime.

The path of our life follows a significant process and pathway. It is universal. We are born as a completely helpless “child”, dependent on the significant other, grow up to acquire education as a “school-kid” which widens the horizon of knowledge until the phase of lively romantic “adolescence” sets in. The phase of garnering attention and enjoying the solace of our dearest ones. The longings, yearnings, sighing and struggles all characterize the phase until he transgresses into the “youth”, where there is vigor, jealousy, competition, challenges to fulfill one’s endless desires, name, fame, reputation and much more. An individual goes through all the tribulations to seek acknowledgement, there are knee-jerk reactions but later when an individual reaches the “middle-age”, he tends to become holier-than-thou, assuming domineering moral authority to pass imperious opinions and self-righteous judgement. And ultimately, the energetic vigor and vitality fades as a man becomes “old” and is left with a frangible body and impaired senses until he knocks the door of oblivion.

Through the repeating patterns of life and death that we witness of our “co-travelers of life journey”, the fleeting temporariness of human life is revealed and can be considered a minuscule in comparison to the vast universe. It is here that we stumble upon the path of truth whose reality has just been scraped off the surface. Delving into the deeper layer paves path for in-depth, extensive, comprehensive analysis and articulation of ‘self-identity’.

In life, the roles that we play in the significant other’s can still be distinct but we are often misleaded by the wrong identification of “I” with the role being played. We often choose to be asininely oblivious to the real self.Our own consciousness, awareness, knowingness, concentrating entities, thinking abilities are all a part of the sentient energy that propels each and everyone to enact their roles on the “world stage”. It is the most important aspect of our “existing” and “being” that we hardly reflect on. It’s the introspection within our own selves that makes the actors we are and the performance we give. It determines the fruitfulness of the lives we live- THE SIGNIFICANT “I “.  The sense of doer ship and ownership in each and every action of us strongly identifies the “I’ in the play.

We are actors in the drama of our own lives which isn’t pre-written but we simply enact to an impromptu mysterious script, which unpredictably unfolds in itself. Our own minds and intuition are our guiding light throughout our lives. We are the spectators of the outcome of our own actions. The significant “I” in his own drama is the sole witness of his own waking state as well as its active participant.

In the course of our lives, we play numerous roles. We act. But amidst that, finding oneself is the key. It is not merely finding, more than that how we create our own self at the face of various circumstances to play the role for the show to go on. In every stage of life, the quest to realise our true identity echoes. In order to assign meaning to our lives, a strong identity needs to be upheld by the capacity to realise our life’s purpose because oscillating between the extremes of exultation and exacerbation would only suffocate us. Loss of identity would only leave us to be caught under the clutches of “Dvandas”.

Every role in our lives begs the question- Who am I? Our life is not a mere journey from an infant to becoming old, but also a journey of self-exploration. At different points we venture from one extreme point to the other and our true identity lies somewhere in between. Our determined values determine our actions throughout life. What we abide by firmly makes us. With age, we mature, ripen and discard ideas, beliefs, destructive emotions which no longer serve us. We may transform, but there’s an authentic self at the core level which remains the essence of our own being. With every evolution at different stages, we shed our skin only for our authentic self to evolve.

Without the “I” in the drama of life there’s a struggle to envision a future that looks any different to our present. There is a sense of stagnancy and discontentment that sets in. With the sense of lost identity of “I”, there’s no action. It need not be a continuous process. To be lost is as legitimate a part of your process as being found. It’s okay to feel a bit lost at some point of time. We do not traverse alone through such points. The only key is to find yourself. It’s only our own individual efforts that can help us in finding own selves. Waiting for another to find us and tell who we are shall only make our vision blurred and hinder us from reaching our true potential to be the “hero” of our own life no matter what stage of life we are at, no matter what circumstances we are put into- “We are and shall always be the masters of our own Destiny!”

By Bishakha Ratha