TO BE OR NOT TO BE

To be or not to be, that is the question. Okay, fine, I’ll admit this time. Yes, I don’t know. I don’t know everything yet I know something. To be or not to be, that is the question. I don’t know what I have to be. What I will be. And what I should be. Whatever I’m becoming, should I be that or not. Whatever I’m doing, should I do that or not. And this dilemma is solely not mine. It’s with almost all of us. Okay, fine, maybe a few of us.

Sometimes I wonder how interesting experiences and humans can be, that no sole experience or narration belongs to only one person in the world. Uniquely. In fact, you’ll find many who have sacrificed their comfort to give freedom to those who needed. You’ll find many who have lost their dear ones. You’ll find many who remain unchanged even after a heartbreak. What I’m trying to say is, from the world on a tiptoe to a house succumbed in comfort, no narration is unique. Are we all similar? I think so. I don’t know about you. I see people and I see stories. I know that in my life, no matter how many people I’ll meet, most of their stories will be the same. Yet it will still be intriguing to hear, knowing what’s in them. My question is why? Why do we think like this? The patterns are the same, yet we still try to keep discovering them more and more.

And here’s the part that gnaws. Do we repeat because we have no other choice, or because the choice itself is illusionary? Do we act like we’re different when all we are is slight variations of the same worn-out rhythms? How much of what we call “living” is actually just breathing, moving, surviving in the shape of stories already told, already understood, already mirrored back to us? And the mirrors don’t even lie, do they? They show everything, yet nothing. And yet we stare. And yet we hope. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe we only stare because stopping would mean seeing ourselves empty.

And then there’s the thought of all the people who carry invisible burdens, people whose choices are the same as someone else’s, whose heartbreak echoes in some other mind, whose courage was already mapped somewhere else. Are we just reliving each other’s echoes, or is it a test we’ll never pass? And the more I think, the less I know. The less I know, the more the questions multiply, and the more they multiply, the less I understand what I am supposed to be doing, being, living, or un-living.

And maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe there isn’t one. Or maybe the point is the pointlessness, and recognizing it doesn’t free you. It only shows you that even the “freedom” of choice is a story that’s already been told, many times, everywhere, in every corner of a world that keeps circling the same questions in different tongues.

To be or not to be. And still, we ask. And still, we live, or move, or float, or break. And still, we ask.

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, to draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” — The Secret Life of Walter Mitty