"To Be, Or Not To Be" Meaning

[Dan.Linehan]

To live or not to live, that is the question.

Is it better to stay, and suffer all of the ridiculous highs and lows of life?
Or to leave, and avoid the trials and tribulations altogether?

We cannot answer this.

Even after you die you still might dream. And who knows what you'll dream?

If it wasn't for that fear who would bear all the evils and humiliations of life?
The injustices and oppression? The gloating of the powerful?
The pain of loving someone who could care less?
The lack of integrity? The abuses of the government?
The rejections we all face?

Why would we put up with all of this when we could just end our lives so easily? Why burden ourselves by continuing to live?

It's the fear of what awaits after death.
Death is an undiscovered country, a place from which no one ever returns.
The existence of death puzzles us and makes us put up with all the miseries of life.

So instead of exploring something we can't we perceive in advance, we continue to put up with our lives here.
Our imaginations make us cowards.
And our resolutions only turn us into self-compromised human beings.

Therefore, we choose to take no action.

To be, or not to be, that is the Question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer
The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune,
Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to dye, to sleepe
No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end
The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes
That Flesh is heyre too? 'Tis a consummation
Deuoutly to be wish'd. To dye to sleepe,
To sleepe, perchance to Dreame; I, there's the rub,
For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come,
When we haue shuffel'd off this mortall coile,
Must giue vs pawse. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time,
The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd Loue, the Lawes delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes
That patient merit of the vnworthy takes,
When he himselfe might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardles beare
To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne
No Traueller returnes, Puzels the will,
And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue,
Then flye to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of vs all,
And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution
Is sicklied o're, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,
With this regard their Currants turne away,
And loose the name of Action.

[Groundless]

Everything is perfectly perfect.

To be or not to be, indeed.

[Restrikted]

I suck at reading Shakespeare (written in old english?), so I may have this wrong. I think the answer is "to be." Why would you risk this life to get a "better" life in the afterlife when you can simply charish this life, then when you die by natural causes, if the afterlife is awesome, it's like a bonus. What would happen if I were to commit suicide and the afterlife doesn't exist? Bad choice, considering I'm going to find out eventually anyway.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

Why would we put up with all of this when we could just end our lives so easily? Why burden ourselves by continuing to live?

If you believe your problems are really problems, then you really have problems.

And boy, did that Dane have problems!

[joco]

Maybe I'm reading the wrong thing into this, but it feels like you're saying if life has no point then why live.

If to live is to know suffering and injustice then why would someone want to live?

We don't know what awaits us after death. I for one do not live because I am afraid of death.

Think about it, what you believe about the unknown is your truth. If you believe in God, then he exists, if you believe in hellfire then you are afraid of death. If you believe in no purpose, then you will not find one. Imagine if someone came into your life and showed you how to find meaning. Wouldn't life seem worth it then in spite of adversity?

Now imagine that you are that person who gives the gift of meaning to someone else. You would be saving someone else from nothingness.

When you feel empty it can be the bleakest existence you will ever know. Look to help yourself.