A MODERN AND WORLDLY PERSPECTIVE
Capable Capable
Capable Capable

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"
Arnold Siegel —September 29, 2014

One of the most famous soliloquies in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth concludes with “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time . . . Out, out, brief candle!
 Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
 and then is heard no more. It is a tale 
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

From Act 5, Scene 5, this soliloquy still invites thoughtfulness and interpretation though it’s been the subject of countless term papers and the high point of many acting careers. In addition, writers such as William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury) and Kurt Vonnegut (Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow) have availed themselves of its poetic muscle, and centuries of philosophers and critics have found it a useful point of departure.

We have been informed repeatedly by scientists, authors (for example, Nobel Prize winning author Albert Camus' "the benign indifference of the universe") and filmmakers like Woody Allen, that the teleologists who explain phenomena by their ends or purposes, are wrong: Life is naturally meaningless; it signifies nothing.

On the other hand, when Shakespeare and many other creative artists help us to recognize humankind’s foibles and vain, soulless posturing intended to impress or mislead, we begin to see how we might weight life with meaning and authenticity.

Here is my point of view. We are born to a possibility. To a life to be fulfilled. For those born to harsh conditions bereft of opportunity, life may be no more than a weary trudge for any shred of human decency. For those whose own lack of deliberative independence, range and flexibility precludes such possibility, well, we’re apt to be poor players, posturing conceits, strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage but adding little to the possibility of our lives being fulfilled.

Happily, our lot is neither the trudge nor that of the poor player. Our consideration of the forces that shape us has given us access to a unique experience of living. By this, I mean that we have an understanding of and gratitude for the privilege to fulfill our unique promise; responsible for our transformative fate, we expect to work hard and earn our way. We are also motivated to be receptive to the subjectivity of another as we would have another be receptive to our own.

Underpinned and informed by its commitment to make life matter, this deliberative voice, is independent. It challenges its systemic intelligence to rise above its history of patterned responsiveness, to see beyond what its untested certainties allowed it to see. It explores the complex biological and social forces that have determined its perspective. And it examines the boundaries to action imposed by its pernicious conceits—deliberative strategies that frustrate its satisfaction with its life and limit its ability to solve its problems. 

In terms of the universe's time, our lives are brief. Poetically, we’ve only an hour on the earth's stage. But as we come to know the proverbial lay of the land, the frustration is eased—resolved in the most insightful and compassionate way possible, and the fact of our finitude is subjectively settled.

Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and leader of its Retreat Workshops and Advanced Classes.

Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and the leader of its
Workshops and Advanced Classes.