This Might Sound Pompous

I was thinking about a soliloquy from Hamlet, the omnipresent "To Be Or Not To Be" speech.

When bits of literature become "common knowledge" they are often so distorted, or so abbreviated, the original is forgotten, or becomes more of an aside to the broad perception, if the original considered at all. (My screen name here is from that speech, by the way--you'll see.)

I haven't read the play in years, though it has been on my to do list for a couple of months now. I still plan to get to it, but time is short at the moment, and it's not exactly light reading. Hamlet is not a happy story. It is about a prince of Denmark. The prince's uncle killed his dad, the king of Denmark, and married his mother, the queen. Homicidal uncle becomes king. Not to ruin it for anyone, but it doesn't end well. Anyway, the speech. It's famous because it's an unbelievably brilliant, profound musing on death--as the devil we don't know--versus the trials of living that can become nearly unbearable.

In the speech, Hamlet compares death to sleep--far less frightening than the idea that we cease to exist--which makes him somewhat hopeful in the prospect that death might actually be preferable to life. But the fact that we simply don't know, once we have given ourselves over to death's sleep, "what dreams may come/When we have shuffled off this mortal coil" is enough to "give us pause." He goes on to muse that sometimes the only thing keeping us from taking our own lives to end the suffering is the fear of what comes after the deed is done; a deed that cannot be undone.

Religions have lots of answers for this, but the truth is that none of us knows what is on the other side--yet, someday, we all will. Sometimes this knowledge is comforting, and sometimes it's utterly terrifying. And how each of us gets there is answered only by time.