To Be or Not to Be – I am Designed to Be

Greetings Dear Reader,

I do not want to ignore that Hamlet is talking about death.  We are designed to be.  We are created to live and to live that life fully.  It is the courage to truly live life that is the greater courage. 

Photograph: Public Domain

We live in a world where it is easy to hide.  It is easy to escape and not engage with the beauty and wonder that is the human condition.  We avoid the pain and suffering of life instead of seeing that through it we can grow.

It is vital that we ponder that we are to be.  We are to grasp life and live it.  It will have pain and suffering.  It will possess disappointments and hurt.  We are to choose to live.  God designed me to be.  I must therefore be.  To be means to live in this moment.  To be is to search each moment for Christ to follow him.

In that following there are things I am required to be.  If I choose to be then I must become those things in my following. 

It is best that you read this aloud.  It was meant to be heard.  Here is his entire thought at the juncture where he asks the question:

Hamlet – Act III – William Shakespeare

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 wished. To die, to sleep,

To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, 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,

The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely,

The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,

The insolence of Office, and the Spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his Quietus make

With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn

No Traveler returns, Puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of.

Thus Conscience does 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 pitch and moment,

With this regard their Currents turn awry,

And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia. Nymph, in all thy Orisons

Be thou all my sins remembered.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)