Lin Yutang on the "Histrionic Instinct"

Consciously or unconsciously, we are all actors in this life playing to the audience in a part and style approved by them.


This histrionic talent, together with the related talent for imitation, which is a part of it, are the most outstanding traits of our simian inheritance. There are undoubted advantages to be derived from this showmanship, the most obvious being the plaudits of the audience. But then the greater the plaudits, the greater also are the flutterings of heart back stage. And it also helps one to make a living, so that no one is quite to blame for playing his part in a fashion approved by the gallery.


The only objection is that the actor may replace the man and take entire possession of him. There are a few select souls who can wear their reputation and a high position with a smile and remain their natural selves; they are the ones who know they are acting when they are acting, who do not share the artificial illusions of rank, title, property and wealth, and who accept these things with a tolerant smile when they come their way, but refuse to believe that they themselves are thereby different from ordinary human beings. It is this class of men, the truly great in spirit, who remain essentially simple in their personal lives. It is because they do not entertain these illusions that simplicity is always the mark of the truly great. Nothing shows more conclusively a small mind than a little government bureaucrat suffering from illusions of his own grandeur, or a social upstart displaying her jewels, or a half-baked writer imagining himself to belong to the company of the immortals and immediately becoming a less simple and less natural human being.


So deep is our histrionic instinct that we often forget that we have real lives to live off stage. And so we sweat and labor and go through life, living not for ourselves in accordance with our true instincts, but for the approval of society, like "old spinsters working with their needles to make wedding dresses for other women," as the Chinese saying goes.


Lin Yutang, from The Importance of Living