My dream was annoying so I woke myself up.
I was Prince of Wales, trying to perform a routine social task – bidding acquaintances goodnight – but there were rules about how and judges to determine if I’d adhered to them and this simple everyday activity had swollen – tumor-like – into a monstrous complication. To hell with protocol, I ground my teeth, to hell with expectations, I’m sleepy, I just want to go to bed!
I lay in the dark decoding my vision. It was too early to get up but I didn’t want to return to dreamland, if that was the entertainment on offer.
My experience as Prince of Wales recalled the frustrations of an earlier prince. Hamlet, in his play’s second scene, is urged by his mom and stepdad/uncle to cheer up. Yes, it was sad his dad died but dads do that so buck up and get on with it – behave like a prince! Hamlet is having none of it: “'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,” he hisses at his mom, who is trying to be a good mom,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
Never has the tension between seeming and being been better dramatized. Hamlet does not want to be a prince, playacting grief, he wants to be a human being, wrestling his desolation. His trappings are indeed a trap.
I was raised to seem, not be. As long as I behaved, it didn’t matter what I thought or felt. A smug little actor, I played my part to my parents’ satisfaction, only gradually learning how to brood and doubt and fess up in disreputable secret. I had that within which passeth show – did I ever! – only no one would ever suspect.
Appearances matter more as we know our neighbors less. The discrepancy between seeming and being becomes conspicuous in the political season. Candidates strive to convince us they’re exhibiting their sincere selves when they’re putting on an act and everybody knows it. Reporters pounce on inconsistencies between present performance and the historical record, as if inconsistency were criminal and not laudable. (“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” harrumphed Emerson famously, “adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”)
Gradually, achingly, over my decades, I graduated from seeming to being. The disgraceful secret me displaced the prettified performer. As it does for Hamlet, muttering confused truths felt worthier than playing a trite part. I wanted to share a little of “that within” to connect with others who felt similarly.
That’s what my dream was all about. The poor Prince of Wales had to be acting all the time, even when all he wanted was to bid goodnight. Likewise candidates for public office: their every gesture is scripted and if they meander off script they’ve got hell to pay.
Leaders must be actors: their business is persuasion. But today, with cameras whirring nonstop, leaders can never leave the stage. Whatever the facts, we vote for acts. Kamala’s task is to always be the Kamala I have in mind.
Do these automata of expectations have “that within which passeth show”? If they’re good at their job, we’ll never know.