Growing up in Italy, I learned little about Shakespeare and his work. I learned more once I grew up and even more when I lived in London. Still, I never saw any of his plays, and I know the titles only of a few of them. But obviously, I remember that famous line from Hamlet.
To be, or not to be, that is the question.
It's undoubtedly one of the most famous lines in literature and theatre. Yet, until yesterday, I didn't know its meaning.
I was writing a piece in Italian about the power of knowing versus the power of not knowing, and I thought that "to know, or not to know" was an excellent title, playing on that famous line from Hamlet. I searched online for the exact quote to be sure I was giving the correct references.
And I finally discovered the meaning of those words.
They are the beginning of a monologue in which Hamlet explains that human beings choose not to take their own lives for fear of finding something worse after death. So, they prefer to endure and suffer their existing misery.
And isn't it a dilemma we face before every change in life?
In the end, any change requires letting go of something we know very well, albeit unpleasant and challenging, to leap towards something full of possibility but also of uncertainty.
How many times do we decide to endure and suffer our circumstances for the fear that changing can lead to something worse?
By the way, the image I used with Hamlet holding the skull that I always associated with that famous quote is, in reality, from another scene in the play.