To die. To sleep. To sleep: perchance to dream.
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
I've been revisiting Hamlet this morning, and appreciating the deep wisdom and genius of this scene — something I couldn't have possibly understood when I read it in high school:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd 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?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
To put a halt to the suffering caused by your mind, does indeed feel like death and dying. Panic, overwhelm, loss of control...but what if death was actually an invitation into the slumber of the mind — stillness, once and for all — so that you could finally dream, love, live a ridiculously whole life?
The battle so beautifully illustrated by Shakespeare here is the battle we face with each new truth we allow into our hearts. We try to filter it through our rational mind. We reject the parts that make us uncomfortable. We try to make sense of our dreams and we try to fit it perfectly with our unstable identity rather than allowing it to obliterate it so that we might rebuild on firmer foundation.
But dreams, my loves, don't work like that. Vision doesn't work like that. Love doesn't work like that. To let love in, you have to let it ALL in, even the things you perceive to be dangerous. Even the things that don't make sense.
You have to be willing to die so that you can awaken to more love.
This is the cycle:
"To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub."