“To be or not to be – that is the question”

David Santos Martinez

 And it sounds so simple that most of us have never stopped to think about it for a minute. What does existence mean? Or a little bit more difficult, what does existence as a human being mean? Once we have ‘digested’ the question, we can vaguely try to find an answer.

We can consider that something exists when it is part of the reality, but how do we know what is part of the reality and what is not? Is a unicorn part of the reality? “No” someone will answer: and immediately he will justify something like: “Because I haven’t seen any”. Then, following the same formula, love happiness, hate… are not part of the reality, because I have never seen them. However, I have experienced them, so I can say confidently that they exist, but they exist in a different way as we do, they are abstract (or intangible), while we are concrete (or tangible). As a result, we have arrived at our first conclusion: we are concrete parts of the reality, which interact with other parts, some of them abstract. When we interact with them, we have different sensations, and it is here where the concept of life appears as a collection of experiences that define us as an individual and irreplaceable part of the reality.

But there is something else that I haven’t mentioned yet. We are, almost surely, the only beings on Earth who think about who they are; and it is exactly this point what makes us feel pretty sure that we exist. “I think therefore I am”, said Descartes. It may sound confusing, but it becomes clear when we see that to think is strictly necessary to “be”. And now the best part comes.

Because of our ability to think, our life is full of choices, and every decision is completely up to us. Sorry, life does not include something similar to a cook book, where you can find all the instructions that will lead you to the perfect recipe. No, you ‘prepare’ your own life; but it is this what makes life exciting. You never know what are you going to face the day of tomorrow, or what are going to be the consequences of today’s decisions.

Nevertheless, life can sometimes be very difficult, tough, and full of suffering; but we must know that there is no reward without effort, and, as I see it, it really worth it: waking up every morning ready to enjoy a brand new day full of surprises is a feeling that can not be compared to anything. Despite this, if our world comes crashing down, we will feel confused and we would not be able to help thinking, as Hamlet did, whether we want “to be or not to be”? And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a personal question.