This famous question from Shakespeare has a particular meaning to me. I'll explain mine, then please explain it's meaning to you?
We struggle all our lives for purpose, meaning, hope and love. The most enduring being hope and love and whether we will care enough to fight for it or give up. The worst deception one can make is to themselves about what's important. Life is bigger than just ourselves and if we can live that way keeping our egos in check, I believe we're happier. It's no easy task though in sharing your existence.
Why some have it seemingly so different and more or less difficult than others is probably circumstantial. Naturally, as the poem suggests we fear death if nothing else for being the ultimate unknown and possibly worse than the hardships of our current life. But being a part of the wonder of it all isn't always enough and we need the fear to keep us. Life makes us a promise in our youth that one day it will fulfill again, "you'll learn to forgive and trust me."
William Shakespeare - To be, or not to be (from Hamlet 3/1)
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 wished. To die to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, 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 disprized 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 undiscovered 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 remembered.
