Thread: To be, or not to be....

If you talk to a suicide or crisis therapist you'll find out that most suicidal cases are looking for a way out of suicide. Even those that think they don't want "to be", actually in reality, want "to be" in most cases.

This thread reminds me that I must watch the production of Hamlet that was on the box the other day and I recorded whilst I was out playing the squeezebox.

It's the Royal Shakespeare Company production with David Tennant (Dr Who) and Patrick Stewart (Jean Luc Picard) It got excellent reviews in the theatre

Be. Clive James tells a story about watching a Japanese film version of Hamlet with English subtitles where that entire soliloquy was rendered down into, "Shall I live or shall I die? Oh I don't know. Who cares anyway?". Still makes me smile.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

That is the question.

Answer:
To be I think. Therefore I am and remain so.

Originally Posted by xman

Ah, "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:" A good question indeed.

Well, "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." so, not to be is the answer.

But, "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 shufflel'd off this mortall coile,
Must giue vs pawse. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:" which suggest we should reconsider.

Reconsider with something Shakespeare is so good at giving us, a shopping list!
"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?" That is a potent argument which calls for us not to be.

Except, "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." Whether you believe or disbelieve still we cannot know.

"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."

So although the desire is not to be, it is hard to take that action willingly. The result is that we remain. We be.

Thanks for asking.

X

Why do I get this feeling that Xman didn't need to google that?

That reminds me of one of the most embarrassing grad-school anecdotes I ever heard. A doctoral student in geology had been up all night for nearly a week cramming for his prelims and, in a meeting with his advisor, actually started having waking dreams. The advisor was showing him a slide of a topographic section that had been formed out of dissolved limestone and dolomite, and the poor guy half-dreamed he was looking at a collage of low brass instruments. He thought he knew the kind of instrument he thought he was seeing, but wanted to confirm it with his advisor. Herewith the brief conversation that almost wrecked his academic career:

"Tuba, or not tuba?"

"That is the karst, son."