This is a piece of 3 quotes.

I think, therefore I am. 

Descartes declared the only axiom of which one can be truly certain, is that one is.

To be, or not to be, that is the question

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is asking the question that Camus later declared the only serious philosophical problem. Should you suffer life or bring forward its inevitable end?

But is this the right question?

Let’s widen our horizon for perspective.

• The universe began 13.8 billion years ago.

• The Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. 

• Life was born 3.6 billion years ago.

• The first animals evolved 600 million years ago.

• Homo sapiens emerged 200,000 years ago.

• The agricultural revolution started 12,000 years ago.

• Recorded history began 6,000 years ago.

• A fortunate human lifetime can expect to be 80 years long.

• The sun will expand into a red giant destroying the Earth in 5 billion years’ time.

• The last star will die in 120 trillion years’ time.

• The universe will reach its heat death in 10∧10∧120 years’ time.

• Time may keep ticking even after that.

The time that has been was vast. The time that comes after stretches boundless. 

At this moment, I am. You are. For most of time I ‘was not’ and ‘will not be’. We have only a few short decades of Being open to us. Surely, we must seize them. We have had plenty of time not being, and plenty more time to not be, later. Now that we are, the only answer to Hamlet can be:

Be.

Be with a capital ‘B’.

The question then, should not be whether to be. So what is the question?

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And- which is more -you’ll be a Man, my son!

Kipling’s minute is the perfect metaphor for life. When we put a lifetime in perspective, short is the only apt description. His rousing cry is to fully live those precious seconds.

It seems to me, the correct question to ask is: how to be?

Our time Being is desperately short. A lifetime is but a flicker in the blaze of the cosmos. So let’s not wink weakly, let’s burn brightly. Let’s live vividly.

Knowing time’s captivity.

No. Live vividly.

So, in relation to the unforgiving minute that is your life, the question to ask yourself is this:

Are you truly living it?