All the world’s a stage

December 16, 2018

     You wonder if you’re losing your travel chops when the highlight of your visit to ethnic London is Disney’s The Lion King. 

     Don’t get me wrong. The show was spectacular, a joyous celebration of life. The costumes, props, sets, music were a great spectacle, and the coming of age story of Simba the lion cub/king was heartwarming. I was pleased to see the people, culture,  and animals of Africa portrayed in such a positive light.

     But I was looking for something more in my explorations of multicultural London, ideally some heart to heart dialogues with people from cultures or religions very different from my own. I suppose it was unrealistic to expect too much in-depth conversation during a busy three week sightseeing trip to London’s museums, theaters, and historical landmarks. But I did have some limited success. 

     I didn’t make it to Brixton, a Caribbean/African neighborhood in South London, but did go exploring in the East End. Brick Lane is the commercial center of a Bangladeshi/Indian neighborhood, with outdoor and indoor markets and lots of ethnic food stalls. The nearby Petticoat Lane outdoor market attracted almost entirely African and Muslim shoppers when I was there. 

     London is an expensive place for lodgings, so I reluctantly stayed in two different youth hostels in north London. An advantage of hostels is that the staff and clientele are quite diverse, and I had roommates from India, China, Europe, Africa, and Argentina. But only polite, superficial chats with my fellow transients. 

     The second hostel was a five minute walk from the London center of SGI (Soka Gakkai International), a Japanese Buddhist sect to which I belonged in my youth. I still do their Buddhist chanting, so I went there every night after my tourist activities to join the locals in their prayers. But the locals are as diverse as the rest of London. SGI is the most ethnically diverse Buddhist group in the world. There I met immigrants from various nations, and one of them, Omar from Senegal, told me that he came from a Muslim family but had converted to  Buddhism in London. His family was outraged for years about his change of religion, but Omar said that they gradually have come to accept that he has the right as an adult to choose whatever religion works for him. 

     Japanese. Senegalese. Buddhist. Muslim. Londoner. Who are we, anyway? 

     In addition to the Lion King, I saw six other plays while in London, and was reminded of all the disguises or costumes that people wear on stage and off. We believe that we are the identities that we have chosen for our current incarnation. We believe that we are a certain gender, ethnicity, class, religion, nationality. So that makes me a white, male, working class, Celtic, Buddhist, American, tourist? Is that who I really am? Or are we all actors in a play? All the world’s a stage, as Bill Shakespeare said, and I enjoyed observing the various masks that my fellow souls have assumed during their theatrical incarnations in London. People watching, soul watching along the Thames, all of us pretending that our play is real, when in reality we’ll all be dead in a few years and getting ready to take on different disguises in other costume dramas. 

     I had a lot of fun sightseeing in London. But the best in-depth conversations I had were with my Self.