Play Your Role
When he leaves the stage, the actor and the character alike cease to be; outside the script, there exists neither actor nor character. On the stage and within the script, the actor becomes the character, but he does not thereby cease to be himself. The character is clothing; the actor is essence. Although the actor — as a man — does not cease to be when he leaves the stage, the actor qua actor does. There are no actors outside the stage.
The man who denies his history ceases to be — if he ever truly even was. The individual is nothing; in attempting to become without being, he destroys any hope of success. For the man without a past there can be no future, and there is no present without a future. There is no creature more false than the man without a history.
The present wields the power to erase the past, and, thus, also the power to destroy the future. Although the past is malleable, he is a fool who alters the past without adequate deliberation. The past is the foundation that supports the present. A house without a foundation will not long stand. With regard to the past, there are no facts; with regard to the future, there are only those facts that the present acknowledges and transmits, and the future, upon becoming present, may do as it pleases, for what was present will have become past — and there are no facts in the past.
To undermine the national myth is worse than murder, for the existence of the nation depends upon the existence of the myth; the destruction of the national myth is genocide. A people whose national myth has truly been destroyed will never rise again. There is no future for those who have lost their past. Who have ceded their past are dead while they live.
