# Hamlet asked the wrong question.

By [Endoverse](https://paragraph.com/@endoverse) · 2022-01-11

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This is a piece of 3 quotes.

### Quote 1:

> I think, therefore I am. 

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

![Photo by frank mckenna](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/0a26d1e7a5a0f5cde300e6ae32293919a5d00fc4c221292480d57e641dcbe3fb.jpg)

Photo by frank mckenna

### Quote 2:

> 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. 

![Photo by Greg Rakozy](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/5e53eefe5016a06d3b6dbe35cc8bf7ca41d48237f013140a14f3b1c725f83401.jpg)

Photo by Greg Rakozy

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?

### Quote 3:

> 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**.

![Photo by Kristopher Roller ](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/78c56d95282fe604ed504bf1b5979a1077b39383aebdbe9e79ab58d74f16c5c9.jpg)

Photo by Kristopher Roller

    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?

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*Originally published on [Endoverse](https://paragraph.com/@endoverse/hamlet-asked-the-wrong-question)*