“I have lived a fortunate life…Mine has been a life that has spanned eight decades of excitement and discovery and relationships and a lot of luck.” – William Shatner.
William Shatner is a Canadian actor who is famously known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise. I had seen a few episodes of Star Trek but not a dedicated follower of the series. But I remember the science fiction series was very popular among the kids in Daly City, California when we visited my wife’s brother. They could recite the lines verbatim which amazed me completely. Apparently, however, Shatner is more than his character. He has a lot to say about his life experiences if we only care to know. And he wrote several books about them. Let’s find out some of them.
In 2008, Shatner published his first book, Up Till Now: The Autobiography, in which he gave us a lot of details about his life, career and marriages. Acting came naturally to him. “I don’t remember being taught how to act,” he wrote, “we just acted. And the school charged admission to watch us act. Actually, I don’t believe acting can be taught, but what can you learn is the discipline of learning your words, having to appear, and having to say them (p.13).” Later in his young life, he became a stage actor with The Stratford Shakespeare Festival “from bit parts and walk-ons to become a leading player in Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice (p.28).” Roger Stevens and Robert Whitehead, both leading Broadway producers, decided to bring the Stratford production to New York. That Broadway experience did not shoot Shatner’s acting career to the moon; however, his credential as a stage actor went up a nudge. Later in the book, Shatner told us amazing stories of how he ended in Hollywood. Here is one, I think, is worth-noting: “Acting is memorizing, absorbing the words and knowing what they mean to the character and how you want to say them. Once you’ve done that, it’s sandbox time. Playtime. What we’re doing is pretending, so let’s go ahead and pretend with the tools we have, the shovel and the pail, or in the actor’s case your lines and your knowledge of the character (p.53).”
After a career as an actor for more than fifty years, Shatner can arrogantly claim to know about life in general. In his second book, Shatner Rules: Your Guide to Understanding the Shatnerverse and the World At Large, published in 2011, it offers a collection of rules and stories that helped and propelled Shatner to stardom. According to him, he wrote the book because: “I’ve gotten to the age where I am counting every precious minute, so although none of us knows what is going to happen next, the dice are loaded for me having less time than more. So it seems that I should give a giant shout-out to everything meaningful in my life, ‘cause you never know when you are going to get another shout-out.” One notable rule is to say yes. Shatner thinks that “Yes means opportunity. Yes makes the dots in your life appear. And if you’re willing and open, you can connect these dots. You don’t know where these dots are going to lead, and if you don’t invest yourself fully, the dots won’t connect (p.7).” Another rule I find worth mentioning is the attitude of burying the hatchet. Many times we find ourselves always bitter and angry even with trivial matters. And if we don’t get over the resentment, relationship gets broken. Here’s how Shatner puts it: “Never go to bed angry. Unresolved anger can destroy even the strongest relationships. And for God’s sake — unresolved anger has no business being at anyone’s wedding! And I’ve had four weddings. I’m an expert (p.51).”
Not only is Shatner living a fortunate life, he is living a long life as well. Born in 1931, he is now into his 9th decade. With so many years behind him, he has so many memories to share. He does just that in his book Live Long and …What I Learned Along the way (2018). He continues to relate the good and the bad events in his life but always urges to live life to its fullest. “I have always felt like the great comedian George Burns,” he writes, “who lived to one hundred: I couldn’t die as long as I was booked. And my schedule was too busy for me to find the time to die (p.11).” For the first time Shatner reveals in this book the secret of his “good, long life: Don’t die. That’s it; that’s the secret. Simply keep living and try not to slow down (p.14).” So active lifestyle is the key but it’s been advocated by many life style gurus that makes Shatner’s secret not a secret at all. Because we are all different, we cannot even tread the same path as Shatner’s. He agrees for he writes: “Each one of us is unique. Different. Not the same. You didn’t have my mother. No one else can walk in my shoes; most people can’t even fit into them (p.15).” That leaves us to what is given to us by nature and what we can control. Yet to Shatner the path we choose is just an illusion. He writes: “Circumstances visit and you go along. You follow the winding road, you make some choices, but for the most part we are dependent on factors not under our control. Things happen (p.19).” To put it in an exaggerated, simple way, Shatner is one of the few lucky people blessed by Lady Fortune. So we can just go on reading the book feeling envious of his wonderful life, though Shatner mentions of a major setback: he has been diagnosed with a prostate cancer. This death sentence, however, has not deterred Shatner; he “wasn’t going gentle into that good night (p.12).” He will rather fight death until the end rather than submitting to it quite meekly. He writes: “Other people may accept death peacefully. Not me — when I go, I’m going kicking and screaming. I’m holding onto the furniture (p.253).” So our biggest takeaway in reading his third book is his fighting spirit. “I never plan for death; rather,” he writes, “I plan for life (p.257).”
Finally Captain Kirk goes to space for real. With a crew of four, including Shatner, the Blue Origin, owned by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, takes its sub-orbital spaceflight on October 31, 2021. After passing the Kárman line, the group experiences weightlessness and is floating around. While the other three are busy somersaulting, Shatner is pressing his face against the glass to see the dark space of the universe and the beauty of the Earth. “That beauty,” he says, “that magnificence of the evolutionary process, struck me so hard in that moment because when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold…all I saw was death (p.89).” He adds: “The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna…things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral (p.90).” When their spacecraft lands back to Earth, everybody is all smiles, including Jeff Bezos and the welcoming party. Shatner, on the other hand, is extremely troubled and seems to be lost in thought. “Going into space,” he writes, “made me so aware of how fragile our lives are here on Earth, how we need each other, and need to continue to strengthen the bonds that connect us to each other. Because out there, there is no life. There is no us (p.91).” That trip does not convince Shatner of the existence of God. He writes: “I don’t believe there is deity in the heavens with a unique, individual plan for everything on Earth below and the stars above. If you have those beliefs, that is your right and if it works for you, that’s wonderful. I consider myself spiritual…The absence of an answer for all of life’s questions does not indicate that there is no answer; it just means we haven’t found it yet (p.177).” Though the search continues for all of us living, Shatner’s participation is rather limited. He knows his time is up: “There is no getting around it; it is a fact. One day, hopefully not too soon, I will slip across that ever-so-narrow gap between life and death, and I will cease to be. I am terrified of it. I’m scared to death…of death. I don’t have certitude of knowing what comes next. I would like to, but I expect to just stop. That will be the story of me. At my age, it is something I think about regularly (p.204).” But there shouldn’t be a feeling of sadness, of regrets when he is gone; for all of Shatner’s long life, it can be summed up in just one word: WOW.
16 August 2024
