all of these aspects of your personal life you may observe tension and
conflict, mimicry and display, meaning and value. These we shall
call the dramatic, the theatric, and the semantic elements in life.

First, let us turn our thoughts to the dramatic element of tension
and conflict.

Every one of us has his own personal will and desires, needs and
compulsions. You may say that there is nothing at all dramatic
about most of them because they are readily fulfilled. But each of
us has, daily, certain wants and wishes, demands or impulses that
are denied. We come up against all sorts of obstacles and personal
opponents. Other people have wills and desires that run counter to
ours--rivals for favors or honors or positions. Impersonal obstacles,
also, may confront us--storms, depressions, wars. Or we may be
blocked by contrary desires or wills within our own personalities.
At any rate, tensions develop.

Situations of opposition are charged with emotion. You have at
certain crucial times in life found yourself opposed by parental will
or social convention, by unrequited love or temptation to wrong-
doing, by poverty or misfortune, by superior athletic skill or in-
flexible man-made or natural laws, etc. Desperately to want an
appointment that is refused; to desire affection that is denied; to
long for recognition that is withheld; to yearn for clothes or a con-
vertible or good times you can't afford; to be pitted against better
or bitter competitors in sport; to be determined to make something
of your life no matter what may stand in the way; to have your
personal values attacked or undermined or challenged--such emo-
tionally charged situations of opposition are loaded with dramatic
potential.

They are most dramatic, of course, if the tension between desire
and opposition really leads to conflict--to scheming and strategy, to
strife and struggle, to successes and setbacks, to suffering and sus-
pense. Such conflict ends finally in fulfillment or utter frustration
of desire, achievement of will or ultimate defeat.

When the conflict is over, the tension is resolved, and the drama is
done. The ending of a human drama is wonderful or terrible or
amusing or unexpected or depressing or tragic--but it is no longer
dramatic. It is the tension and conflict--conflict or competition or
compensation or other combative or adjustive behavior--that we
have called the dramatic element in life.

The second element we shall call theatric. It was introduced in
terms of mimicry and display.

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