I love Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, and have the opening line of that most famous soliloquy on a poster above my desk. Usually with that quote, like a lot of things in our everyday environment, it’s a case of, see it, don’t see it. It’s there, I love it, but I don’t really notice it.
The other day, though, as I sat at my desk after a particularly insightful conversation with a friend, that quote suddenly jumped out at me. We’d talked about what had changed for us under lockdown, about the things we missed — not much as it turns out — and the things we had a new appreciation for — simple things like walking, fresh air … conversation.
These things were a good indicator of what we truly valued in life.
We also talked about our lives so far — what we’d done, what we hadn’t — and the possibility of death. Neither of us have lost perspective in the coronavirus outbreak, despite the media hysteria, but people, including people our age, are dying. What if it wasn’t to come, but was … now? It sounds morbid, but it really wasn’t. We were stoical and calm. Everyone dies, and everyone believes it is to come. But at some point it isn’t to come, at some point … it is now.
I was still sifting through the threads of that conversation when I saw — actually saw — the Hamlet quote.
Something … an idea, a moment of clarity, and then it disappeared. Wait, what .. ?
I jumped up, retrieved my copy of Hamlet, and flicked to Act III, Scene 1. I didn’t consciously know what I was doing, I didn’t think about it, but I skipped to the last third of the speech, to these lines.
“… who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
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,
Than fly to others that we know not of.”
This was it. Hamlet was saying that it’s fear that stops us from killing ourselves, “the dread of something after death” that makes us carry on, enduring the vicissitudes of life, and while I’m sure that makes complete sense to the psychology of a Danish prince dealing family dysfunction, in that moment, I couldn’t have disagreed more.
The conversation with my friend had catalysed something in me. The “to be or not to be” speech had crystallised it.
When we’d spoken of the things we valued, it was an affirmation of life, of wanting to live; not because we were scared of death and what it might hold for us (if that even makes sense in the 21st century) but just because … life. The simple act of walking with the sun on your face, the rain or wind on your face. Taking a breath. The deep beauty of silence (Mark Nepo’s wonderful book, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, captures this). Writing, with a pencil and a piece of paper. Simply holding your own children.
These things point to something much deeper, something I do not have the poetic skill to translate into words. There are many who have (this being one of my favourites), but it seems right to leave the final words to Shakespeare.
“There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” Hamlet says in the final act of the play.
Yes, exactly that. The rest is silence.
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