Is it better to suffer through all the terrible things fate throws at you, or to fight off your troubles, and, in doing so, end them completely? To die, to sleep—because that’s all dying is— and by a sleep I mean an end to all the heartache and the thousand injuries that we are vulnerable to— that’s an end to be wished for!
To live, or to die? That is the question.
To die, to sleep. To sleep, maybe to dream—yes, but there’s the catch. Because the kinds of dreams that might come in that sleep of death— after you have left behind your physical body— are something to make you anxious. That’s the consideration that makes us suffer the disasters of life for so long.
Because who would suffer all the trials and troubles of time—the oppression of the powerful, the insults from arrogant men, the pangs of unrequited love, the slowness of justice, the disrespect of people in office, and the general abuse of good people by bad— when you could just settle all your debts using nothing more than an unsheathed dagger?
Who would bear his burdens, and grunt and sweat through a tiring life, if they weren’t frightened of what might happen after death— that undiscovered place from which no person returns, which we wonder about and which makes us prefer the troubles we know rather than fly off to face the ones we don’t?
Thus, the fear of death makes us all cowards, and our natural willingness to act is made weak by too much thinking. Actions of great urgency and importance get thrown off course because of this sort of thinking, and they cease to be actions at all.
But wait, here is the beautiful Ophelia!
My beauty, may you forgive all my sins in your prayers.