Want to be a Star?
FROM CHAPTER SEVEN: WANT TO BE A STAR?
THE ACTOR (Part Two)If life is a play and the world is a stage, what role are you playing? Do you have a starring role, or are you an understudy? Do you stay in the background while others are in the spotlight? Is your part in the play smaller or less-than? If so, do you want to be the star? If you do, there are things you need to know. You have to be ready to take on the leading role. You will have to learn your part. You will have to give your all. You have to do more than dream; you have to do something about it. You have to be ready to get noticed; after all, if all the world is a stage it means people are watching.
If you are the star, you have to work more and work harder. Still want to be the star? If you are the star of the play of life that means you are out front most of the time, having to please the house. If you are the star you have to shoulder the responsibility for the play’s success. They will remember you if the play was good, but they will be just as likely to curse you if it was bad. Remember it is the excellence that matters. Still want to be the star?
THE PLAY (Part One)
If all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players, where is the script? If we are here to act in the play of life how do we know what to do in each scene? So, where is the script? It is in our souls, and it was given to us at birth. However, the script is empty except for one word, LIVE; the pages are left blank for us to write on. The idea of a pre-written script for one’s life would imply fate or destiny. Fate and destiny are excuses for things that would not be changed – things either loved or hated. We create our own fate and destiny by writing the script ourselves.
We write our script in many ways, much of it through the image we have of ourselves. That image can be interpreted as inner voices giving us our cues and directing our actions. We can allow those little voices from backstage (in our heads) to become our voice having us speak falsely and change the scene from joy to drama. The script is up to us because God gave us freewill. Freewill is that double-edged sword that cuts both ways. We can use our freedom to create bondage and play the part of the victim, or we can use it to be triumphant and play the part of the hero. It is not only done unto us as we believe, it is done unto us as we choose. We can misplace the blame and believe that our choices are being directed by outside forces, but choice still lies within us.
THE PLAY (Part Two)
If we reach for stardom and make it, it probably means we danced to our own music; sang our own song, gave all that we had, and loved a little along the way. It means that we did not settle for something less than our idea called for, or settle for another’s ideas. We reached for something and touched it because the play is about possibilities. We did not shrink in moments of drama or give way to scenes of sadness or grief, but instead looked at the possibilities all around us. We were drawn to this play to act in it. We have inner strengths and truths that support everything we do. We all have moments of stage fright, but I do not think anyone has ever died from it.
THE STAGE
The first stage set was lush and fruitful with everything that the actors could ever possibly want; where God (the producer) walked in the cool of the evening and watched over the play. But with one bite of an apple, the scene goes dark, and the set changes. With the set change, the plot becomes about suffering and hardship, lack, limitation and survival. No longer concerned with identity, but just making it through the scene, the actors change the plot to “What is life.” But soon the actors found that the answer to what is life keeps changing, because life keeps changing. We live by universal Laws and put different things in and get different things out. So the actor, bewildered, realizes the original plot, “Who am I?,” seems to be the right plot.
The stage as we know it today can have pitfalls, trap doors, and dark places. But this stage is only a false front to the original stage that lies within. Within each and every one of us lies the original stage of life, the garden where our dreams and desires are realized. It may be a place that seems far away, but it is not. To find it, we have to find ourselves; to see it, we have to see ourselves.
from the poem:
The Master is in the Mirror
“Rambling from door to door,
In rooms bewildered, I walk alone.
Things seem to appear then disappear,
So nothing seems quite my own.”