Dramatis personae

The other day I was thinking about life and I realized how strange it is that every experience I've had plays such a big part in my day-to-day actions.\nI'd like to make a leap now. I'm going to assume that we're all just the product of our lives. You might disagree with me, but the way I see it, that means one of two things. Either you're right and we're all more different than I thought, or I'm right and you just refuse to admit it to yourself.\nIt can be hard sometimes to realize that a broken heart three years removed is why you acted the way you did today. It can be painful to think you still haven't gotten over some traumatic event from your youth. We want to act like we're in control, and if our past dictates our actions tomorrow, we lose our sense of invincibility.\nThe other day I was reading Shakespeare, which is something I find myself doing a lot, having enrolled in "Intro to Shakespeare" (who saw that one coming?) Anyway, I was thinking about how all the plays fall into two broad categories: either everyone gets married or everyone dies. Sure, there are exceptions, but overall there are two endings, comedy and tragedy.\nSo I was thinking about my life and I was reading Shakespeare and I became very frustrated because life's not that easy. At least mine isn't, and I'm still working on the assumption we're not that different.\nI sat at my desk, staring outside, wondering what makes life so complex.\nThen it hit me.\nShakespeare didn't write plays about all of Romeo's normal nights. He wrote a play about the night Romeo met Juliet. And the play isn't Romeo's biography, it's about one of his stories (albeit, his last one). It was just one of his experiences.\nSo then I started thinking about my life again and I tried to relate to that idea. Some of you might think I'm flawed in my logic because Romeo was just a character created by Shakespeare. You might not agree with me, but the analogy fits fairly well with my ideas about God.\nSo if I'm just a character, maybe I don't need to get frustrated tomorrow when I don't save the world or feel like I helped someone or, heck, even meet the girl of my dreams. \nCould it be I don't need to get frustrated because maybe tomorrow isn't a part of my play? Maybe it's all just leading up to that special line that marks Act I, Scene i.\nThat's not to say every day isn't important. It's background. It's character development. And who knows, maybe I'm a character in someone else's narrative. (And to say their story is less important than mine is a little egocentric, isn't it?)\nSo what does this mean? I guess I look at life as a series of plays sharing the same characters and setting from time to time, but each containing a new moral.\nGreat stories don't happen in a void; they need complex characters that understand the world they live in. Anyway, who knows? Maybe my adventure starts on a fateful Wednesday morning in October. \nThen again, maybe it doesn't.