When everyone mourned Juliet’s death, I suddenly noticed—the actors on stage have such clear, human-like outlines too. One day, they’ll leave this world, and their loved ones will mourn them just the same. Words, theater, and music feel transcendent—they take us somewhere we’ve never been, but will one day go. In that dim space between stage lights and the darkened audience, I sensed how art collapses the distance between imagination and mortality. What we call fiction is only life rehearsing its own endings.
Leaving the theater, I often feel dazed. The people in front of me—how are they different from the actors? From the characters in the play? Everyone performs in some way: gestures smoothed for approval, emotions restrained for harmony, smiles practiced until they feel real. Life, too, has its stage directions, and I’m not sure we ever step offstage.
Being an actor wouldn’t be a good fit for me. Any job that projects someone else’s ideals isn’t. We end up living lives that aren’t ours, chasing expectations that aren’t ours, performing feelings we don’t really feel. Actors are seen—they don’t get their own life. Yet, perhaps, that’s what frightens me most: that we are all actors without realizing it, applauded for how well we disappear into our roles.
Watching Romeo and Juliet, I cried twice: when they got married, and when Juliet found Romeo dead. Seeing a story with its ending in mind is strange—you suddenly see the rot under the grandeur, the separations behind every meeting. Writers don’t invent reality; they write what they see. Every story, every life, has its patterns. Dramatic moments aren’t dramatic—they’re just the foreshadowing. And maybe that’s what makes art so piercing: it shows us how fleeting even sincerity can be, how every beginning quietly carries its own end.