Tom Stoppard Saved My Life
Yesterday I had an especially grueling day and as a result I came down with some kind of psychosomatic flu. I felt so ill I wondered if I might die. So I did what anyone would do on the brink of death. I grabbed Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing and didn’t let go until I was convulsing with laughter.
This passage seems pertinent today. Think of Stoppard’s great dialogue while you stand in line at the voting booth. From Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing:
Annie: It’s his view of the world. Perhaps from where he’s standing you’d see it the same way.
Henry: Or perhaps I’d realize where I’m standing. Or at least that I’m standing somewhere. There is, I suppose, a world of objects which have a certain form, like this coffee mug. I turn it, and it has no handle. I tilt it, and it has no cavity. But there is something real here which is always a mug with a handle. I suppose. But politics, justice, patriotism–they aren’t even like coffee mugs. There’s nothing real there separate from our perception of them. So if you try to change them as though there were something there to change, you’ll get frustrated, and frustration will finally make you violent. If you know this and proceed with humility, you may perhaps alter people’s perceptions so that they behave a little differently at that axis of behaviour where we locate politics or justice; but if you don’t know this, then you’re acting on a mistake.