The Timeless Wisdom of King Arthur of Camelot

We just got back from watching an outstanding performance of Camelot at the Act II Theatre in Ambler, PA, and some of the dialogue really struck me.

Early on in the play, King Arthur is struggling to figure out why we have wars in which people get killed. He notes that

when a hawk is up there looking down at the world there are no boundaries. Right? Yet boundaries are what somebody always attacks about. And you win by pushing them back across something that… …that doesn’t exist. So we have battles for no reason at all.

His thoughts give voice to something I have been thinking about more and more; how artificial a border is, and yet people are willing to put up walls and to go to war over those artificial borders. Or as Arthur says, we have battles for no reason.

And battle doesn’t have to just mean war; it could mean arresting people and separating families for the simple reason that they are crossing an artificial border; and for what?

So Arthur’s solution was to create a Round Table and to try and bring people together, not keep people out.

His ideas seemed to work for a while, bringing a period of peace. But that peace was short-lived, and was brought to its knees by Mortrid, the son of Arthur, and a traitor.

I guess it shows that there is evil in the world, and sometimes it gets the upper hand.

But at the end of the play, Arthur offers hope that the peaceful world of Camelot would return, as long as people spread its stories of the good that it did.

So like Arthur, I’m hopeful that the troubles we are going through in our country will soon be resolved, and we can work towards the goal of having a peaceful and kind society.

Or as King Arthur put it: