Mining Shakespeare . . . Benefits of Membership

The other day, in The New York Times Nicholas L. Kristof called on William Shakespeare to make sense and provide clarity in today’s turbulent political scene.

The other year, a Shakespeare professor at a nearby graduate school made studying the Bard exciting and wonderful by going through the play under study at the time to find a different metaphor, a different image to look for. One time he would scrutinize the play for references to horses, another time it would be gardens, and still another time, as Kristof did, he sought images of war.

Symbols of belonging
Undoubtedly there are in Shakespeare’s 37 plays myriad allusions to an undefinable craving to belong. “What, art thou yet living,” Benedict says to Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Richard III so wants to belong to royalty that he kills off everyone in his path. As a young carouser, Prince Hal longs to belong to the renegade gang led by the portly Falstaff.

Belonging means being a member of something — a family, a school, a girls’ clique, a boys’ team, an organization.
The other day the Ad Club Membership Committee met and after two hours of serious chatter found something they hadn’t known before, a camaraderie that drove them to add to the benefits of belonging to the New Jersey Advertising Club, not the least of which is the camaraderie they discovered.

Benefits
First on the list was Networking — The chair reported that several people joined the club recently because of the networking they envisioned at the organization’s programs and events.

Second was Education. These very programs not only delight in many ways, but they inform, they educate. The Wake-Up Calls, especially, reinforce lessons many attendees know but find refreshing to revisit and critical to their jobs. Career Day is a giving endeavor that has catapulted many young people into careers in the marketing/communications industry.

Third was the serendipitous Camaraderie, which means being able to get along even in a diverse situation. At the membership meeting, there were four men and one woman and no one even noticed.

And the fourth — the HQ Global Network, where people can rent spaces for meetings in clean, well-appointed surroundings.
Another possibility mentioned was belonging to a credit union, a feat that is simple and doable because it comes with no cost to the Club but with great advantages to its members. We’ll keep you posted.

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