All the world's a stage...

We always think of the past in terms of change.

"When I was young..."
"A few years ago we didn't..."
"It hasn't always been this way..."

But last night, as I sat watching a brilliant production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, it was easy to believe that some things truly don't change.

After all, Shakespeare wrote those words hundreds of years ago, and here is a group of high schoolers forfeiting their Friday night to hear them. Though the language is old (and beautiful, depending on your tastes), much of it still lives today. We unwittingly use words Shakespeare first penned, and his plots and reproduced over and over again.

And it's no mystery why these things don't die as easily as his characters seem to do. There's a reason the lines resound as easily with teenagers as the audiences of old. There isn't a high school student in the world who hasn't felt the sting of unrequited love, that can't sympathize with Helena as she clings to Demetrius and he pulls her around the stage or with Hermia's confusion as her love Lysander suddenly has changed his mind. Or even with Puck as he expresses remorse over his misdeeds before telling the audience not to be alarmed, it's all simply a dream.

These human emotions are timeless and unchanging. Even though we'd like to turn a nostalgic eye on the past, what matters always seems to stay the same.

Singing to Turn Back the Time

Sometimes, songs are like mini-time machines.

When I, as most people do, hear certain songs, it instantly zips me back in time. I experienced this very vividly last night.

As usual, I couldn't sleep, so I turned to my trusty ipod to entertain my restless brain until it decided to let me sleep. The first song that came pouring from the headphones to flood my weary head was "I'm Still Breathing" by Katy Perry. Instantly, it was last summer, and I was lying in approximately the same position in my bed, but my headphones were plugged up to side of my cd player.

I'd just spent the day with my dad and grandmother in her town, shopping. It had been an above-average day. It had been a long time since the three of us, a multigenerational group, had been together without the pressures of the rest of the family. These two are perhaps my two favorite people in the world, and if you add them up, you get roughly myself. We laughed and had more fun in a Sam's, a pool store, and a furniture place than anybody ever should. At the furniture store, a distant acquaintance of my grandma's attacked us, desperate for a sale. Dad and I laughed, sipping on the free Cokes in glass bottles that you get upon entering the store, as Grandma tried to keep the persistent sales lady at bay.

At Sam's, we impulsively purchased a gigantic jar of pickles that still remains in our fridge. Mom gawked at it for weeks, cursing our sillyness and love of pickles.

At Target, we inconvenienced the sales people to the point where we thought we'd have to make a great escape before they tied us up in the back with packing tape and price stickers and leave us for dead because Grandma tried on every knee brace in the store, leaving a trail of open packages and frustrated employees in her wake. She didn't even buy one. One girl ran the length of the store in pursuit of a tape measure that turned out unnecessary. We only found this abundantly funny, but she probably didn't.

After that long day of shopping and bonding, I couldn't sleep when I got home. Eager to listen to the new CD I'd gotten at Target, I popped it into my CD player since I didn't want to go through the trouble of turning on my computer to put it on my ipod. I used the headphones as not to awake the rest of the household.

Now every time I hear any Katy Perry song, I remember that day with my grandma and father. The events that took place probably seem mundane to anyone else, but to me it meant a lot. I'm glad I have this sort of mental soundtrack to take me back whenever I wish to relive it.