Post #2 2/2/09 Acting. It's What We Do.

2/2/09

As Oscar Wilde once said, “I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”

I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Wilde. Because what is life, if not a façade that we’ve cared for and nurtured since the beginning of our very existence? Every single day, whether we’re aware of it or not, we act. We act like we know what the heck our friend is rambling on about when, in reality, they lost us the moment they opened their mouth. We act like we don’t care that the barista handed us a caffe macchiato instead of a mocha cappuccino for the second day in a row. We act because as humans, that’s exactly what we’re programmed to do.

Never mind Johnny or Brad or Julia or any other celebrity for that matter. They’ve just taken acting and gone pro. I’m talking about the regular, day to day performances that we put on whether it’s simply for ourselves or a wider audience. We act because we all got something to hide. It may not be the most interesting or scandalous of things but granted, it’s there. The question is: how well do we hide them? Like celebrities, there is a vast spectrum of categories we can fit into from the A-listers to the D-listers. The A-listers are impeccable. On the outside, their façade is flawless. They could be through an emotional nuclear war and we would suspect nothing about them. The D-listers, on the other hand, are…well, let’s face it, not everyone can be a star.

Now, personally, I see a direct link between acting and lying. When you act, you lie about who you really are. When you lie, you act like something you’re really not. So in a sense, we’re all guilty of being liars, just not necessarily to the extreme that we normally associate the word. So lie to me all you want because chances are, I’m lying to you. About what, that’s for me to know and for you to, hopefully, never find out.

Does that then mean that there isn’t any truth in anything that we do? Is our facade limited to simply being smoke in mirrors? Not necessarily. Because we may also act (or lie) if it serves a greater purpose and does not just benefit ourselves. Our motives may be to strive to work toward the virtue of truth though even if the means to achieve this are less virtuous. The ability to do this, however, is debateable as discussed in “Lying and Ethics” an article by Tim. C Mazur, since “the ideal person we continuously strive to be, cannot achieve one virtue without achieving them all.”