Every moment in the Performance of Our Lives

            In the production of Hamilton, the musical, Lin must constrict decades worth of history into a two-and-a-half-hour musical production. This restriction obviously forced him to have each moment encapsulate so many more in the history.  However, the immediate relationship I drew was between this and what Jiko says in A Tale for a Time Being, except Jiko refers to many moments in each second of our lives.  By extension, the joint argument from A Tale for a Time Being and Hamilton: The Revolution is that each moment of our lives is as if we are in a performance all the time.

            This metaphor especially works in a professional setting.  Businesspeople are constantly having to dress in some form of ‘appropriate attire’ or getting into costume, they must put on a show in order to impress their bosses, clients, etc. Furthermore, each of these moments is calculated and rehearsed at some point.  Whether in school or at home, each step of a business career is preparing for the ‘performance’ or interview or big meeting, in which every moment must count and be concise, but clear enough to be successful.  Without a ‘rehearsal,’ there is a very likely chance that something could go wrong and the ‘audience’ does not see the full value of the performance.

            Furthermore, Lin hones in on this fact in the second to last scene of his musical, when Hamilton is shot. He slows down time in Hamilton’s final moments in order to say that this is when his legacy will be made.  Those moments are what we, the ‘audience,’ of Hamilton’s journey will focus on most in his life’s performance. From this we, as modern human beings, learn to make every moment count, because we do not know what the audience of the future will look at most.