(my Tom Stoppard-signed copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)
Guildenstern: “Give us this day our daily mask.”–Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
“There will be time, there will be time/To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”–T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Especially today–the first day of school–as teachers meet the students, parents, and staff. Roles–we are constantly performing them in the work world, adopting external personas “to meet the faces you meet” in various contexts. A certain inauthenticness kicks in despite the edges and whatever thrills of intense engagement on the restart-runaway-school-year-treadmill or a new job. And so begins another round of what Eliot dubbed “the buried life”…