To be or not to be -Anna Grace Gay
To be or not to be. -Anna Grace Gay
I am beginning with a line that is always immediately associated with Hamlet the moment it is heard, “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” The application to this one statement is fairly simple I feel, but I want to add something to it that I realized seeing this is my second time reading Hamlet. In this we see that in his mind, everything has gotten too heavy to carry and he is now weighing the possibilities of suicide or continuing to live. This is such a sad reality he has gotten to if we are completely honest with ourselves. Anytime that someone gets to a point in their life where they are willing to take their own life, a life which does not belong to them in the first place, is a very scary reality. A few lines further Hamlet continues with, “ But that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have that fly to others that we know not of.” Hamlet is now coping with the fact that to him, what comes after death is totally unknown. He has no idea and that scares him. He eventually comes to the conclusion that because it is unknown, what is in the afterlife may even be worse than what he is dealing with right now. He would honestly just deal with what he can see right now then go into something he has no idea about. Reading these lines got me thinking about two things. The first being, what assurance we have in Christ. I mean Praise God that if we accept His free gift of salvation we know with complete confidence where we will spend eternity after we die. We do not have to fear anything related to eternity. We can trust that because we have Jesus in our hearts, we will spend eternity in heaven. But there is another side to this as well. What about the people who have no idea what would happen if they died? You may encounter people like that everyday. They do not know what salvation is or who Jesus is or what will happen once they die. That is a thought that scares me. Think about for it a minute. What if you had no idea what would happen to you, for forever. Forever is a topic that is hard enough to wrap our minds around but just try for a minute. What if you had no idea what would happen to you once you died but all you knew is it would happen forever? People need to hear the assurance they can have. This is something we can not get callus too just because we have heard it all our lives and read about it in every book. Maybe it is just me, but I love when I read a literary text and it shows me a lesson applicable to my life. I enjoyed this little moment into the mind and thoughts of Hamlet.
I am beginning with a line that is always immediately associated with Hamlet the moment it is heard, “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” The application to this one statement is fairly simple I feel, but I want to add something to it that I realized seeing this is my second time reading Hamlet. In this we see that in his mind, everything has gotten too heavy to carry and he is now weighing the possibilities of suicide or continuing to live. This is such a sad reality he has gotten to if we are completely honest with ourselves. Anytime that someone gets to a point in their life where they are willing to take their own life, a life which does not belong to them in the first place, is a very scary reality. A few lines further Hamlet continues with, “ But that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have that fly to others that we know not of.” Hamlet is now coping with the fact that to him, what comes after death is totally unknown. He has no idea and that scares him. He eventually comes to the conclusion that because it is unknown, what is in the afterlife may even be worse than what he is dealing with right now. He would honestly just deal with what he can see right now then go into something he has no idea about. Reading these lines got me thinking about two things. The first being, what assurance we have in Christ. I mean Praise God that if we accept His free gift of salvation we know with complete confidence where we will spend eternity after we die. We do not have to fear anything related to eternity. We can trust that because we have Jesus in our hearts, we will spend eternity in heaven. But there is another side to this as well. What about the people who have no idea what would happen if they died? You may encounter people like that everyday. They do not know what salvation is or who Jesus is or what will happen once they die. That is a thought that scares me. Think about for it a minute. What if you had no idea what would happen to you, for forever. Forever is a topic that is hard enough to wrap our minds around but just try for a minute. What if you had no idea what would happen to you once you died but all you knew is it would happen forever? People need to hear the assurance they can have. This is something we can not get callus too just because we have heard it all our lives and read about it in every book. Maybe it is just me, but I love when I read a literary text and it shows me a lesson applicable to my life. I enjoyed this little moment into the mind and thoughts of Hamlet.
Commented on Cade's and
I've had a couple friends commit suicide over the years. It is absolutely horrible to even think what depths of disparity a person must be in to go through with the act. What went wrong? How could it have been stopped? These questions eat away at the mind like a cancer. Your post is awesome and I agree that people need words of encouragement. However, I think that encouragement would be more effective if the person simply knows that someone cares. The first step is always presence.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who has previously thought these thoughts, I can tell you that it is a lonely, terrible place to be. In moments of despair, we tend only to see what is wrong and where we failed, rather than look to God and where he has redeemed us from, who he has placed in our lives that love us, and the truth of the gospel. Essentially, when I was in those moments of getting close to throw it all away, I was asking if it was better to exist or not. Praise God I'm still here today, for his grace and mercy poured out every morning anew.
ReplyDeleteIt’s really crazy that even today people get to the point where they feel they need to end their life. I think what is the scariest part about Hamlet’s contemplation is that he chooses not to kill him self because he’s afraid of what happens after death. That’s scary every person should have an idea of what will become of them, even an atheist knows what their ending will be.
ReplyDelete