No day but today.

Ah yes. RENT. The 1996 Tony Award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-winning rock opera/musical by Jonathan Larson, who tragically died of aortic aneurysm before he could even see his life's work open on the New York stage. 

I was a teenager back then, but I was enamored by the exuberance, the passion, and the romance of the bohemian characters living for the art and giving it to "the man."

RENT is without a doubt the single piece of literature that has formed me as an individual and informed my decisions and philosophies. If someone wanted to know me better, RENT is definitely one of those places one should start. 

I first learned of RENT when I was watching the 1996 Tony Awards on a local channel. I didn't know it back then, but this clip would change my life.

 As the iconic open chords, to "Seasons of Love" played it immediately caught my attention as the company lined up, "A Chorus Line" (or firing squad) style, and was enraptured by their question, "How do you measure a year?" The call to quantify the quality of one's life is answered by the eyebrow-raising suggestion, "How about love?"

To consider love indeed as a unit of measurement. The great unquantifiable mass noun that is love. How audacious. How cheesy. How true. 

When the rebellious anthem to the bohemian life, "La Vie Boheme" erupted onstage, complete with Anthony Rapp's spastic dance moves it was something I had never seen on stage before. No one else had. It called out to all the misfits and deviants who did not belong to the mainstream of society, "To faggots, lezzies, dykes, crossdressers too," and I answered back with the rest, "To me!" and "To you, and you, and you, you, and you!" 

It spoke to me like no other work ever had and gave me a template to live my life by. 

That said, the years have changed me quite a bit. I no longer yearn for the bohemian life. I may have started out as an idealist-dreamer, but I've settled now more as a realist with ideals.

It was therefore quite interesting to have been able to see it again onstage after ten years. I had grown up quite a bit. I'm a different person now, a full-fledged adult who has been knocked out by life and had for all intents and purposes adapted to life in society, playing myself up to its expectations and marching to its beat.

The 20th anniversary touring cast that played in Tokyo, wasn't the best one that I saw. Granted there were some standout performances, Christian Thompson as Benny being one of them, it lacked the energy and urgency that the piece required. It felt more like people singing along to their favorite songs rather than really embodying the heart of the message. 

By that I mean, it lacked the fear of the phantom threat that is AIDS and the isolation that life at the end of the 20th century. It's quite disappointing especially since it's themes of isolation ring especially true now in this social media era where there's so much isolation despite being so interconnected.

Most disappointingly was the lack of chemistry between Roger and Mimi, the tragic lovers who hid feelings for each other and were fighting off their own respective emotional baggage of living and dying with AIDS. Roger fearfully retreating from it, while Mimi simultaneously recklessly and admirably fighting to live her life. 

This is best captured in the scenes, "Life Support" where the characters attend a meeting for people living with HIV and AIDS and facing the uncertainty of having live and knowingly die with the disease. The mantra, "Forget regret, or life is your to miss." is questioned by a small but no less significant character Paul, who argues that the mantra is good and all, but reason says otherwise. 

What room does the human soul have for emotion and hope when reason says that it is all going to end anyway.

The scene shifts to Mimi in her apartment preparing for her effusive number, "Out Tonight" where even at her relatively young 19 years of age declares her determination to live her life despite all the pain and heartbreaks from "all the scars of nevers and maybes." Really, it's all an elaborate and lusty setup to ask the emotionally unavailable Roger out on a date.

Roger's response is not what she hoped for as he pushes her away to come back "Another Day." Mimi, along with the rest of the chorus, sings in counterpoint that in fact that there is "No day, but today." 

I had almost forgotten about this mantra. Rather had written it off. Last week, I was thrown back into the moment of being 17 again, and how I had sworn that I would live each moment as my last.

In many ways, that seems unwise. To take it literally of course, is exactly that. We should temper our decisions with the reality at hand. No sense in living out every single fantasy. However, we shouldn't always brush off our hopes and dreams aside, if they're real, just because it's difficult or fear that it might not happen. 

Fear can be our friend. It protects us from being hurt. It compels us to survive. But it cannot be our primary driving emotion in life, because at best, fear just allows us to survive, to merely exist.

You may exist and alive, but if life is filled with regret, then have you really lived your life? 

You may be safe and intact, but are you really whole? As a person. 

Last weekend, I sat and watched both as a 34 year old man, and as a 17 year old. I had prided myself in deciding at 16 that I would take control of my life, and that I would act like an adult. It was somewhat foolish, but I have to say, as I looked back on my life, I was had been true to my word.

I knew exactly who I was and what I wanted even back then. I had lived each moment as if it were my last, more or less. I mean I wasn't jumping off buildings or anything, but I certainly worked for what I wanted. My personal measure of success is to be ready to die at any moment and say well, I least I did all I could have done up to that point.

I did not always succeed, as these blog entries serve as testament to my folly as well, but I never really lived with regret.  

Perhaps now, I'm more of somewhere in between Roger's pragmatic (and defensive) stance and Mimi's idealistic (and reckless) beliefs. A little older that before, but surprisingly, still the same.

So amidst all the uncertainties and pain, I continue to choose to understand, to empathize, to love.