The first thing I noticed about Hamlet’s speech is that beginning line — “to be or not to be.” I find it undeniably catchy (if you can call poetry that), and that alone makes it memorable. On a broader and more serious scale of analysis, though, I think we’ve all contemplated the necessity of our existence at some point in our lives, whether it be in a passing, self-deprecating joke with a friend or in genuine moments of deep self-doubt. If that is not a fact of the human experience, then you are either lying to yourself and/or the people around you, or I have just revealed an uncomfortable part of my mental state. I don’t think we have to associate an admittedly heavy question with an equally solemn, negative answer like Hamlet’s in every case; sometimes, asking ourselves whether life is worth living can be an exercise in gratefulness, in which we recognize what about life is worth living and remind ourselves of those reasons to be.
I personally believe Shakespeare’s right when he says that “to be or not to be” is “the question.” Ultimately, doesn’t our answer to that question dictate the course of our lives? I can imagine that someone who generally identifies with the “to be” part of that first line is pretty motivated to make their life rewarding by bettering themselves or seeking out meaningful experiences, while the opposite may be true for the unfortunate “not to be” folks. While Hamlet asserts that people do not commit suicide because of the uncertainty of life after death, and that could be true for many, I think there’s a lot more to why, daily, billions of people choose to live of their own accord. I’m probably overanalyzing, but for me, the “or” in the statement, “to be or not to be,” is a source of hope — the idea that no side to it is absolute and that it is part of life to alternate between those two states of mind in moments of happiness and moments of sadness. At this point, I think it is enough to simply wake up every day and consider Hamlet’s question, even if our answer to it is not always the same.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die — to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream — ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause — there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
