Live Long and . . . by William Shatner

Author:William Shatner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

6. My Curious Quest for Adventure

THROUGHOUT MY ADULT LIFE, in an effort to understand more about who I am and what is this wonderful gift we have been given, I have on occasion found myself coming back to a few profound questions, among them: What the hell am I doing here? How did I get into this? And perhaps most important, How am I going to get out of this?

I don’t think of myself as an adventurer. Meaning I don’t set out to put myself in precarious situations. I’m probably not someone who would have gotten into a ninety-foot-long sailing vessel and sailed into the unknown, believing there were demons just below the surface. I don’t necessarily equate being adventurous, taking a chance, with being a test of courage. Rather, I am someone who tries to satisfy my curiosity. Which is why I have often ended up in precarious situations.

With age comes the expectation that you have acquired wisdom. Sages and gurus are never depicted as young men or women. They are most often wizened old men who pontificate in sometimes mysterious words. They are the people sitting on mountaintops or in remote places who supposedly have discovered the secret of life—and are willing to share it with people searching for … the answer. While in my acting career I have had many encounters with these people, I’ve only played one once. In the sitcom Third Rock from the Sun, I created the character of the Big Giant Head. Big Giant Head was the commander of the four aliens living on Earth disguised as human beings. And he wasn’t written as an especially wise man. In fact, when he was challenged his response was simply, “The yelling will cease and the killing will commence!”

Because I have lived more than eight decades, people have mistakenly assumed I have acquired that knowledge and so I have been asked that question: What is the secret of life?

Here’s the answer: If I knew, it no longer would be a secret. I would shout as loud as I could for everyone to hear: “Here it is! Here’s the secret of life!” For me, the answer has been simple: Keep living. I have always been open to new experiences. More than anything else, my philosophy of life has been: Say yes, yes to life. That isn’t a secret.

I don’t know where this need to abandon security and seek adventure comes from. I actually should have been exactly the opposite: I have this terrible fear about being alone and yet throughout my life I have left loving arms and gone out into the world without knowing where I was going. It sometimes is incomprehensible to me that a person who so craves the warmth of familiar places would try to become an actor. Acting may well be the least secure of all professions. There is no such thing as security; there is only “I hope I get another job.” In other professions you follow a well-trod path;

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