Purpose, the Individual, and the Universe

"You see, there's this guy named Dave …"

Or, as C.S. Lewis put it, more eloquently (or longwindedly) in "The World's Last Night":

"We do not know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. We do not know who are the major and who are the minor characters. The Author knows. … But we, never seeing the play from the outside, … cannot tell at what moment the end ought to come. That it will come when it ought, we may be sure. … That it has a meaning we may be sure, but we cannot see it. When it is over, we may be told. We are led to expect that the Author will have something to say to each of us who has played. The playing it well is what matters infinitely."

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‘And what is this play about?’
A shorter, funnier version of everything I tried to say in the previous post can by found in Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s script for Shakespeare in Love: WOMAN (to RALPH): And what is this play about? RALPH: Well, there’s this nurse. … The play Ralph is describing is Romeo and Juliet. Now, if Ralph were writing a paper for his literature class on the meaning of Romeo and Juliet, he’d likely get an “F” for this approach. Similarly, no editor wou…

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