Time Mocks Us

Either we try in desperation to clutch our dream at the last by deluding ourselves with some tawdry substitute; or , having waited the best part of our lives, we find the substitute time mocks us with too shabby to accept.

-Eugene O'Neil, From the New York Tribune, February 13, 1921

O’Neil is a playwright from the Modern period. I like him. He said, “The theatre to me is life—the substance and interpretation of life” (From an Interview with Oliver M. Sayler).

It’s kind of interesting that I took a course in Modern drama this semester with everything that has occurred lately. I never really cared for the Modern genre until I found myself suddenly and forcefully transported into the psychological situations of Modern characters. I don’t think I would appreciate O’Neil’s (as well as the other modern playwrights’) work like I have if I didn’t experience what I have this semester. I definitely would not have understood this testimony of his: “I’m always, always trying to interpret Life in terms of lives, never just lives in terms of character. I’m always acutely conscious of the Force behind—Fate, God, our biological past creating our present, whatever one calls it—Mystery certainly—and of the one eternal tragedy of Man in his glorious, self-destructive struggle to make the Force express him instead of being, as animal is , an infinitesimal incident in its expression” (From A Letter to Arthur Hobson Quinn).

It amazes me that I can identify with all that la-te-da up there. I have been wondering a lot lately if this happens to everyone at some point in their lives. Everything just starts to make really scary sense. Something clicks one day…or everything you had goes down the drain, whatever…but nonetheless something does click, and your entire reality becomes absolutely surreal. I  have had chronic nausea trying to get my head around what life is lately. The conclusion: you don’t end up saving yourself, you just understand yourself.