The Seven Ages

Thought I'd re-post this entry from my very first attempt at blogging way back when.


All the world's a stage is the phrase that begins a famous soliloquy from William Shakespeare's As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jacques. The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play, and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the seven ages of man:

1. infant,
2. school-boy, student
3. lover,
4. soldier, jealous in honour - quick in quarrel
5. justice, reflecting and deciding
   
6. pantaloon, meaning rich, retired and lecherous
   
7. second childhood,

Shakespeare means that the world is nothing but a theatrical stage where we humans are actors. From our birth we enter the stage and keep on acting true to our age, until old age when we act the last scene.



By contrast, here is how "The Seven Ages of Woman" was depicted eons ago ( by Hans Baldung Grien at theLeipzig, Museum der Bildenden Künste).

(Note: I've removed the actual picture and provided just the link)

How typical of men indeed, they talk of themselves in terms of functionalities but see women only in forms!


All God's creatures, if they live long enough, shrivel and die. It does not matter really how you look when you die but it is how you had acted in your various roles in life that measures your worth in God's eyes.

So is the world a stage? Hey, we are all auditioning for the next show.

I am KaiZendra and I embody KAIZEN.