"Our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!"
Thus spoke a character in Eugene O'Neill's play Strange Interlude (1928). I've been thinking about the play's title a lot lately, rather than the play itself. And I've been wondering not about how our entire lives are interludes in some grander framework, but instead how our lives are composed of a series of discrete interludes that seem strange and bizarre as we move to the next one.
An example would be going to college. It seems eternal and impossible to complete when you're just beginning. Long afterwards it's like it happened to somebody else. You can only think, "What was that all about?" The same applies later to your career. And I can apply the logic to other facets of my life, such as when I was more conventionally spiritual/religious, when I was a vegetarian or vegan, when I was conservative or liberal, etc.
To my first girl friend I once lamented, "I'm just going to have seemed like a phase in your life when you're much older." She brushed off the remark. Now I not only know that was true for her, but suspect she might not even remember me at all. Family and career would have compartmentalized everything from that period when we were together into an amorphous lump called "school" that appears so quaint, naive, and irrelevant when compared to subsequent interludes.
A lot of grief could be avoided if we could accept the "interluding" of our lives more gracefully. Don't attempt to hold onto people, habits, and customs from periods gone by, at least if it's too much trouble to you or others. Have the courage to be somebody else, the person who fits best with the current interlude. Be willing to jump happily to the next one when the time has come and not to look back unless it's only to smile for an instant. And take an impish pleasure in being remade into something unpredictable, quirky, and unusual in a process not totally under your control.
Thus spoke a character in Eugene O'Neill's play Strange Interlude (1928). I've been thinking about the play's title a lot lately, rather than the play itself. And I've been wondering not about how our entire lives are interludes in some grander framework, but instead how our lives are composed of a series of discrete interludes that seem strange and bizarre as we move to the next one.
An example would be going to college. It seems eternal and impossible to complete when you're just beginning. Long afterwards it's like it happened to somebody else. You can only think, "What was that all about?" The same applies later to your career. And I can apply the logic to other facets of my life, such as when I was more conventionally spiritual/religious, when I was a vegetarian or vegan, when I was conservative or liberal, etc.
To my first girl friend I once lamented, "I'm just going to have seemed like a phase in your life when you're much older." She brushed off the remark. Now I not only know that was true for her, but suspect she might not even remember me at all. Family and career would have compartmentalized everything from that period when we were together into an amorphous lump called "school" that appears so quaint, naive, and irrelevant when compared to subsequent interludes.
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| Interlude in the flow of the Rio Grande, near Creede, Colorado September 2018 |
A lot of grief could be avoided if we could accept the "interluding" of our lives more gracefully. Don't attempt to hold onto people, habits, and customs from periods gone by, at least if it's too much trouble to you or others. Have the courage to be somebody else, the person who fits best with the current interlude. Be willing to jump happily to the next one when the time has come and not to look back unless it's only to smile for an instant. And take an impish pleasure in being remade into something unpredictable, quirky, and unusual in a process not totally under your control.
