In this issue of LYF we have played around the metaphor of life as theater, the roles that each of us play, the image of ourselves that each one of uscreates and which often does not correspond to one’s true image.

To cite Pirandello, each one of us is “One, No one, and One hundred thousand”.

We are never the same person and those who live alongside us experience all the different aspects of our personality.

We are all actors and spectators in this big theater of life, in which feelings, passions, dramas, the absurd, the marvelous, all the pulsations of our human nature move us in one direction or the other, making us assume roles and wear masks.

In much the same way as Shakespearian characters we interpret timeless stories, timeless lives, that are part of our common internalized culture. Stories that come up time and again throughout time, because they represent and are distinctive of the essence of humanity.

Every moment of our existence is an opportunity to interpret a different role, and to use Shakespeare’s words “all the world is a stage” on which we all interpret many different roles.

The theme of Role Play is inseparable from human experience; we constantly live fragmented in countless roles that often hide our true “I” in favor of a more accepted “outfit”.

Other times it is others who impose upon us modeled identities that are foreign to us because the vision they have of us does not coincide with our true selves.

Man is therefore a creature that navigates among his many masks, perhaps in search of a better image of himself…or in search of something that raises barriers inside himself…

To cite Shakespeare once again, I would like to leave you with a bit of food for thought; an extract from Macbeth, ACT V, SCENE V:

“Llife’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon thestage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

(Cover photo by Hailey Kean on Unsplash)