A Muse on What Matters.

I feel the need to make another post before the day ends, but it’s late so I’m going to take the lazy option:

One quotation from an e-mail of my genesis, and another from a play attributed to Mr Shakespeare (although I have my doubts; I’m a bit of an Oxfordian at heart.)

“I do think we take all the wrong things seriously. As for what should be taken seriously, some might say ‘the love and connection between people.’ Others might say ‘feeling a sense of joy in being alive.’ Yet others might say ‘seeking that which lies beyond.’ Personally, I think they’re all far more important than being the Chief Executive of a multinational corporation, or being the Archbishop of Canterbury, or (heaven help us) being a celebrity. Such things which the system teaches us to treat as the stuff of demigods are all just manifestations of Shakespeare’s hollow crown."

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd;
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd — for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps Death his court: and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit —
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable — and, humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and — farewell king!
     ~Richard II 

Whoever wrote it was a better writer than me, obviously. There's always somebody better than you, isn't there?