Poets and Saints

One of my favorite plays is Our Town by Thornton Wilder, who in the author’s own words describes it as “an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life.”

The stage manager narrates throughout. In the third act, the character Emily has died and she’s talking with others in the town who have died. Against their advice, she wants to go back to one day in her life, her twelfth birthday. The stage manager let’s her know that “you will not only live it, you will watch yourself live it.”

After watching the day unfold, she wants to leave and go back.

Emily: “I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. . . I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. . . Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?”

Stage manager: “No.” Pause “The saints and poets, maybe, they do some.”

Notice today, every, every minute. See people, look into their eyes, and your own. Poets and saints.