Exeunt, Pursued by a Bear

I need to add a little bit of context to this one as well. I started it a few nights ago, and then my class assignments took over. I'm just coming back to it now, and like anything I've written my thoughts about it have changed just over the past couple of days. I thought I would come back to it and write a lot more, but I don't think there is a lot more to say about it just now.

The title of this is probably one of Shakespeare's stage directions. It comes from yet another of Shakepeare's plays that I have not read, yet. As a former English major it is embarrassing how little of the Bard I have actually read. What's funny about the line is that there is no mention of a bear in the play prior to this. Apparently, the Bard just was having some writer's block or something trying to figure out a way to kill off the character, Antigonus. Maybe he figured he would catch up on some sleep and come back to it.

Anyway, the title really has very little to do with this post except that the death of Antigonus occurs offstage by said bear. Really I have been thinking not about The Winter's Tale nor even about a play written by Shakespeare, exactly. I have been thinking about Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstren are Dead. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Spoiler alert: they die. Stoppard, though, wrote his play that mostly takes place in the wings of Hamlet. He makes them into the main characters of the play. Indeed they are the main characters in their own respective tragedies, though much of their play occurs in the wings of Hamlet. I have been thinking about that because I have been thinking about being my own main character in my own play.

I am going to go down to Florida for a little while. I want, need, to have a bit of escape from the main action going on stage here to take a moment in the wings. I need a pause to think about the direction my life is headed and take some control, at least in my own mind, of what Act Three is going to look like, now that I have mostly coasted along in the first two acts.

I want to be the main character in the story I am writing. A friend put it to me this way before. We all should be the main characters in the life stories we are writing, I have been the main character at times. I have made some important, life-changing decisions. In high school I decided that I really wanted to go to school in France. I decided to leave the state of Michigan to go to school at Northwestern. I have proposed and been married twice. I have decided on job offers that led me to the career I have. Along with Jennifer, we decided to buy a place down in Florida. There have been smaller decisions. I have taken up surfing and bought a surfboard, for example.

There have been some life-changing decisions made for me. Those I do not want to broach here, Our main character has to face a number of adversities at times, things he or she does not have control over. The story would not be particularly interesting without them.

It is those uninteresting times that I have struggled with, the times where I have felt, not like some other person were necessarily directly affecting me, but more like I was a helpless plastic bag being borne through the city, through my life, on a breeze. Floating from one day to the next, marking time by the passage of television series that I binge. I think it was mostly those times that led me to self-destructive behaviors, actions that allowed me to take control of my life again despite their very negative consequences.

With a new medication the urge for self-destructive behavior has been blunted, but the urge to control my own life and be that main character has not. The question is, how do I row through the doldrums of life rather than simply letting the current take me where it will? I know that it doesn't matter which way the winds blow or current runs if I have no destination in mind. I think that is how others deal with the doldrums. In those relatively quiet times, other people have something to row towards. They appreciate the times when the winds are at their back, but they also appreciate the quiet times where they can row towards their destination (albeit still hard work) and take a break from tacking against the winds that blow in their faces.

I had no destination in my mind last fall. I had no destination in mind for many years before that even. Last year I weathered a tropical storm, literally and figuratively. With the storm winding down now, I again face the fact that I still have no destination. I feel very selfish for even saying that I want to chart my own course or be the main character in my own play. (Re-reading this post makes me realize how selfish it is and really how selfish this blog is even.) It is much less selfish, though, than the ways in which I tried to gain control of my life in the past. What I really need to work on is becoming more self-less. Some people get away to find themselves, and I need to get away to lose mine.

Did you know Florida has over 4,000 bears?