One of my favorite plays is Thorton Wilder's OUR TOWN. I am sure I have read it 50 times. OUR TOWN is the story of Grovers Corners, New Hampshire, a small New England town, where people are born, live out their lives and die in much the same fashion as you and I. Toward the end of the play, Emily Webb, whose life the drama has traced out from childhood, dies bringing a baby into the world. After her death she decided to return to earth for just one more day. The day she selects to relive is her 12th birthday. In a very moving scene Emily watches the events of this particular day unfold and she becomes painfully, tragically aware of how much she had missed; how much we all miss in our day-to-day life. Clocks ticking… sunflowers… food and coffee… new ironed dresses and hot baths… sleeping and waking. When the pain of it all becomes too much Emily says "Oh earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you." And goes on to ask "do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” Emily returns to death, sadly disillusion by her experience, and she is told "Now you know. That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion or another. Now you know" well, that pretty well sums up our lives doesn't it? There are so many things we take for granted. There is so much beauty our eyes behold but do not see. We fritter away time like we had a million years to live and indeed we are always "At the mercy of one self centered passion or another". Possibly like Emily Webb we will be able to get life in proper perspective from the vantage point of death. What a pity so few of us can do so here and now. Again to quote OUR TOWN… "This old planet keeps straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. The strain’s so bad that every 16 hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.”
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