January 11. 11.20pm. “Button, do you see life as a never-ending play and the world as a stage where that play is being enacted? All of us are playing out a role there.”

“Never thought of it that way but, now that you say it, I understand what you mean.”

“God is, of-course, the director, who keeps adding new characters to the play and taking some away from time to time.”

“That must be some task directing a play for decades.”

“I remember a quote in Shakespeare’s As You Like It which says the same thing but in verse.”

“How does it go?”

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…”

“It’s exactly the way you described it!”

“The first role we play is of a child, then a school-going kid. After that comes the professional stage and then marriage. The next is that of a parent followed by old age and finally death.”

“You’re right. So what you are saying is that we play all these parts as we go along?”

“Do you know that one goes through a second childhood when he turns old?”

“How is that?”

“Because an elderly person usually becomes more like a child.”