In the, so far, most notable of slightly more than three score plays I have written (and one of two plays, so far, with its title taken from lyrics to a Nelly Furtado song, oddly enough), a work called “Even After All These Years,” the action in the play shifts back and forth between the eventful lives of people separated by some 2800 years of history in the same locations. In the present-day, two Ph.D students in history (one an American male, the other an Israeli female) are in Israel examining and interpreting a find from the city of Samaria for their related but different dissertations on the lives of common folk in Israel during the divided kingdom period. Through the course of their investigations, they fall in love and marry and also end up being unwitting participants in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, forced to use deadly force to defend themselves. Meanwhile, the play also deals with the specific events on that tablet, concerning the adventuresome life of a young man raised by his uncle (named Shaphat, a minor biblical character, the father of Elisha the prophet) who seeks to have his father’s farm in the town of Abel Meholah returned to him. Through the course of his at first fruitless journey he meets the godly courtier Obadiah, the fierce prophet Elijah, and has to use deadly force to defend himself against a would-be assailant who was a relative of the men who killed his father, eventually proving himself to his future father-in-law to be a brave and stout young man and suitable husband of a lovely Israelite young lady.
Now, I must say that, thus far, none of the events above have happened to me. But when I wrote this play in 2003, going so far as to research wedding customs in Ancient Israel (as well as between among modern and somewhat religious Jews, thanks to an acquaintance of mine who happened to have been trained as a rabbi) and use some chronological data gained from another friend of mine who is an amateur historian deeply interested in calendar data (which, I must admit, is not a major interest of mine), I was deeply unaware that the sort of research interests I had were themselves related to a much deeper level of study than I had yet undertaken, or was even considering at the time (or for years afterward).
The ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, more than 2400 years ago, made the following deep and profound statement: “Ethos anthropos daimon,” or, translated into English, “Character is destiny.” It is a man’s ethical system and habits of behavior that determine his fate. This subject, due to its profound nature, has been the subject of musings on fallen and corrupt politicians (like one article, found here, on former Illinois Gov. Blagojavich:
Additionally, the phrase “Character Is Destiny” have been used as the titles of books by such diverse authors as Sen. John McCain and Thomas Hardy. Most of the times the phrase is used, it carries with it hints of tragedy that the tragic flaws within people end up drastically affecting and destroying their fate. The Greek playwrights like Sophocles (author of at least nine Oedipus tragedies, three of which survive) were particularly fond of the almost law-like way in which noble characters were destroyed through the flaws of their character. Modern-day journalists are no less fond of dissecting the tragic flaws of public characters with almost surgical detail, and the tragic flaws of prominent people are splattered on the covers of gossip magazines and the exposè segments of entertainment gossip television shows.
It is not this tabloid aspect of the phrase “Character Is Destiny” that I would like to explore, though. What I find particularly odd about my writing about a semi-autobiographical historian and his research habits (and romantic inclination for intelligent and attractive foreign brunettes, which has been a plague in my life) is that long before I had ever consciously sought after that field of study I had analyzed precisely what character traits and personality quirks would show themselves in my research interests. In fact, in a bizarre way, my own fictional character showed an aspect of my destiny by drawing out the implications of my personality and habits.
How so? First, this historian was drawn to obscure subjects and common people. Not wishing to write about kings and other famous men, this fictional historian was drawn to study about the lives of regular Israelites in the shadows of biblical history. The same sort of “populist” inclinations are present in my own studies–a desire to write about the lives of people and peoples who are often ignored and neglected by the political and cultural elites, a desire to reveal the truth behind the facade. Second, this historian was persistent and insistent about going to the place where the history occurred. Now, at the time I wrote this play, I had never been to Israel or the Middle East (though I would go to Turkey in 2006 and Jordan and Israel in 2007 in search of “field” experience with the places of biblical history), but that fictional trait was also a trait in my own research, a desire to see the reality on the ground, even if that means putting yourself in harm’s way by visiting somewhat dangerous places.
And that sort of tendency is precisely the reason I have written so many different plays. For some bizarre reason (to me), I have long sought (since beginning to write plays as a teenager, in the mid-1990’s) to draw out the implications of my character and that of others around me through writing plays where I put characters like myself and those I know in certain positions and detail the consequences, be they heroism or decadence or martyrdom, or merely romance and adventure. What remains to be seen is what destiny we all have–but such a destiny, whether it be in the academic world or others, will be because of the character traits developed and honed and practiced through persistence and diligent study.
Edge Induced Cohesion 