I went to see ‘King Lear’ again at the National Theatre - the return visit prompted by my son Max, home in London from university in the States, and very much wanting to see this acclaimed production (which I first caught in March with his sister Amelia). There’s a line early on in the play that truly spoke volumes to me. When Lear rails at his daughter Cordelia for not mimicking her malevolent sisters and making false declarations of love to him, he instantly casts her out of his life with disturbing vehemence. The Duke of Kent - one of the few sane voices amidst a narrative of increasing malignity and bloodshed - tells him he is not seeing things clearly. When Lear furiously contradicts this, Kent’s advice is bluntness itself: “See better”. What an extraordinary line - and not a bad ‘modus vivendi’ as well. Consider your own life: its attendant complexities, its moments of wonder tempered by disappointment, doubt, personal shortcomings, and the hell that can be other people (not to mention yourself). To ‘see better’ is such a necessary undertaking when it comes to negotiating life’s ongoing challenges, and the fact that our perception of any given situation is often clouded by so much. And because there is no such thing as empirical truth in matters inter-personal, to see better is also to acknowledge: yours is never the definitive answer. I have a distaste for all manuals of self-improvement. But to ‘see better’ strikes me as not a bad goal to embrace. Only by seeing better can we also see our way into change.
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 00:31:39 +0000
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