In My Dear Friends in America, Daisaku Ikeda wrote:
“You are the playwright of your own victory. You are also the play’s hero. Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players” (As You like It, act II, scene vii, line 139).
Buddhism teaches us that the individual writes and performs the script for his or her own life. Neither chance nor a divine being writes the script for us. We write it, and we are the actors who play it.
Despite the fact that we can take responsibility for our lives and plot out the life we’d like to live, there’s no getting around the fact that some things are simply out of our control. Even in a real stage play, props fail, actors forget their lines, and any number of things happen that could disrupt the beauty of a carefully crafted script.
Then what?
It’s a cliché to say attitude is everything, but it certainly does count for quite a bit.
When acting out the drama of your life, sometimes you have to improvise until the story gets back on track.