Tuesday, February 14, 2012

To Be or Not To Be

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Is it better to be alive or dead?
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
Dying is just going to sleep
The heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
and ending the pains of life
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
The reason people don’t kill themselves is because they don’t know what happens next
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
The reason people don’t kill themselves is because they don’t know what happens next
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
Who would want to put up with lifes struggles
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely,
Being abused by superiors and arrogance of man
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,
The curse of love and the corrupt legal system
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 Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
Why would you choose this life over the next?
But that the dread of something after death,
Because we are scared of death
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
No one has come back to tell us
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
We’d rather stay with what we know
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
We are cowardly because we think too much
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 thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
Pray for me, Ophelia.