Today is my first blog diary post, December 6, 2013, Bowling Green, Kentucky.
”To be or not to be” are famous words, nearly everyone has heard them, but few understand them, or think they understand them and probably don’t. In fact, maybe I don’t. But I know what this passage from Shakespeare’s ”Hamlet” means to me, and it isn’t a topic for mild chit chat.
A diary is a daily recording of a person’s life. It isn’t generally meant to be a work of great depth. However, we have seen examples where diaries have turned out to be works of incredible depth and insight. One of the most notable is ”The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank. This book of writings by a girl forced to hide in a house in Amsterdam because of her Jewish heritage is one of the greatest works of 20th century literature.
Like Anne Frank, I have no such ambition for this diary. I am just writing for my own pleasure, but I have thought that it would be interesting to make it a diary online, since I can have as many different blogs as I want with this system, why not?
To be or not to be is really a challenge to us to be daring to do things we have never done, to say things we have never said, to venture into areas we have never imagined to discover if there is more to us, to life than what we have been living up till now.
It follows that you have to leave your old self, your old existence and follow a new path, knowing full well that there is no certainty of success with the path you are taking. After all, who would go to another world and be set upon by a new set of challenges and uncertainty? Isn’t it just better to go on living the life we know, with the challenges and uncertainty we know of now?
There is no return from the path to your dreams. Life will never be the same and your challenges will be new ones.
To be a different person, you have to be willing to be seen as a different person, and most of all, you have to accept yourself in that new role. Our conscience does not want us to adopt a new identity, and if we give in to what our conscience says to us…
”…the Native hue of Resolution is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment, with this regard their Currents turn awry
…and lose the name of Action.”