“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Video games have given us the archetype of the non-playing character. I’m the hero of the game, and I can take action, have adventures and consequences for what I do. The Non playing characters (NPCs) are in the game doing one thing, with no variation.

Like, a troll, or a princess that must be rescued. They only have one job.

As I move forward in my upcoming radiation therapy, every day I am lying on a table and being hit with X-Rays—Don’t move! Don’t breathe too hard!—I am an NPC. It’s their world I am in, an object to be pushed into the shape of their choosing.

Video games’ portrayal of the NPC is not new. It’s instantly recognizable. They surround me. Clerks in stores, other pedestrians as I’m walking the streets—so many people I do not interact with but who share a space with me.

But I want to be the hero. If I’m not the active player, who is?

That play I’m quoting at the beginning-- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead –is a play about two NPCs in Hamlet. They show up say a few lines and die in Shakespeare’s version. Tom Stoppard gave them their own play. Everyone is the hero of their own life.

Sorta.

Thoreau wrote
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation... From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.”

I don’t want to be a rodent. I’d rather be up and fighting the dragon.

There is a lot of background work that goes into fighting a dragon. Even the heroic knights in armor had to stand very still while their squires strapped them into the armor.

Heroism take a lot of forms. I am learning that to be the hero I want to be I have to stay still.