Today a coworker asked me casually, “Don’t you get sick of Shakespeare knick-knacks?” He’d noticed my desk has, let’s see if I can get them all:
- laptop decorated with Shakespeare stickers
- business card with Shakespeare’s picture and “Not of an age, but for all time” catchphrase.
- an old book, “Shakespeare Criticism 1919-1935”
- Shakespeare teddy bear
- multiple Shakespeare imagery postcards from “Behowl The Moon“, a successful Kickstarter that Shakespeare Geek readers helped get off the ground
- Shakespeare bobblehead
- Shakespeare action figure
- homemade Shakespeare “Funko POP” figure
- (what happened to my Shakespeare finger puppet?????)
“No,” I reply.
“Just wondering,” he said. “I’m a Bruins fan, and everybody knows I’m a Bruins fan, but there eventually came a time when I had to tell people, stop buying me Bruins stuff, I’ve already got just about everything. My wife’s the same way, she likes sharks, people know she likes sharks, but it’s like, enough already, stop buying me shark things.”
“I see it differently,” I replied. “I call it decorating my life. I don’t even necessarily use this stuff or read these books. But wherever I go, people who don’t know me can see, Shakespeare. And they ask me about it. And there’s a connection there that might not otherwise have been made. I’m putting more Shakespeare out into the world, through that person. Everybody wins.”
If you want more of something that you love in the universe, decorate your life with it.