QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Balance Everything", originally uploaded by michduchene.

"I never knew so young a body with so old a head."
-William Shakespeare, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Being a theatre dork, it was only a matter of time before one of our Girls in the Hall quotes came back to Shakespeare. This particular one popped into my head last night after talking with a group of juniors and sophomores who are part of a group that goes to see a play every week and then discusses what they have seen. Their insights were brilliant, and their passion for arts was contagious.

Do you ever feel like you are an old soul trapped in a young body? That is what these words of Shakespeare translate to me. It was my hands down favorite quote of the bard when I read it for the first time in English class, and has stayed with me through a lot of years and daydreams.

Of course, there are the girls who the opposite of this is true--the ones who dress like twenty-five year olds, but probably couldn't name any of the works of Shakespeare. There was a time when I envied these girls. They wore miniskirts the first day of spring, and my friends and I were more comfortable in t-shirts and flip-flops. They dated the boys that we doodled about in notes. I loved decoding metaphors and similes in English class, they sat in the back and threw spit balls at the teacher. You get the picture here, and I am sure know many a girl like this at your school. I would often look at them and think that I was born in the wrong time period. Staring out at the fence at the edge of school, I wanted to break free and fast forward or rewind to another decade. I felt like the universe had spit me out in a place where my old soul didn't belong.

Then, I read THE MERCHANT OF VENICE and this quote changed me. It was only as I kept rereading that same line, sitting on my school's lawn, headphones in and highlighter out, that I realized I had been wrong my entire life. Really, really wrong. My old soul was not a weakness, it was my greatest strength.