To Be, or Not To Be?

One of the things that becomes clearer as we grow up is the sheer tragedy of life.

It turns out that life is risky business.

As we enter our twenties, we gain a clearer awareness of the finitude of our existence. As a child everything seemed eternally fixed in place - you think that you will live forever, that your parents are invincible and immortal too. You felt that you were the center of the universe and that the world was beholden to you.

This grossly inflated our sense of importance.

However, reality soon begins to teach a more nuanced definition of our place in the world.

Early in my twenties, I began to understand that I am just a single thread in the large fabric of the universe.

Before I was born, the universe was going by okay, and long after I am gone, it will still do. The planets will still revolve and the birds will still sing their songs.

What, then, is my purpose here? How do I know that my existence means something in the greater scale of things?

I believe that these are questions that we must ask with courage and honesty and keenly seek answers to at some point in our lives. We cannot shy away from them.

They conjure up a sense of smallness at first. They break down your ego. And more importantly, at least for me, they bring up an acute sense of one’s mortality.

The question, then, becomes, as William Shakespeare posed, ‘To be, or not to be?’

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…

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Memento Mori

Everybody dies. However, we tend to want to think that everybody else will die except us. That’s understandable, as part of staying sane is keeping this fact away from our conscious awareness.

And so we live with a willful blindness to the brevity of our existence. Accepting that we won’t be here forever directly contradicts our ego.

Yet the keen appreciation of our mortality can be one of the most transformational shifts in life.

It forces me to own up to my everyday decisions and actions. I begin to have the sense that all that I do matters. Life means so much because time is so limited.

When I accept that I will not live forever, it lights a fire under my seat. It infuses a sense of urgency into whatever I do. The Romans had a phrase for it, ‘Memento Mori’ – Remember death.

Therefore, whenever you get too comfortable in life, ‘Memento Mori’; whenever you find yourself procrastinating, ‘Memento Mori’; and when your life has lost impact and become dull, ‘Memento Mori’.

This also gave me a keen sense of risk which changed my perception of life. I began to realize that the nature that we are a part of is unforgiving. That the world does not owe us mercy.

This sharply contrasted with the unbounded sense of blind optimism I had growing up. I began to see and experience the multitude of ways that things could go wrong. I started to perceive life as fragile and every action and decision that I took as a risk. What if I fail? What if I lose everything? Eke, danger even lurked outside in places I didn’t know or couldn’t dare to look.

Most people develop a strong risk aversion in their mid-twenties when this reality sinks in. The thought that things could go wrong scares them to their core. Illness, bankruptcy, jealousy from enemies, and even their mortality fill them with terror. I have met such people.

Their response to the risky nature of life is to do nothing. If doing something will increase the chances of failure, why even try? If reality does not care how good or smart you are and will disappoint anyway, why care? Seeing as life is so tragic and everybody dies anyway, why trouble oneself?

Doubt is okay

The mystery of being starts becoming an important concern at around this age too, if one is keen enough to question.

On many nights have I have wrestled with my soul about this matter. Now and then, the question as to why I exist arises and demands an answer. It is easy to give trivial and generic answers that we have heard and been told. But that unsettling feeling remains at the bottom of our souls until we truly and honestly face it.

For someone to be made whole, they will be broken down first. These inner tides and new doubts poked holes in my perception of reality. On many occasions, as I peeled off the masks, the walls of sand upon which my little castle was built began to disintegrate.

Yet I remained proud of my doubt because it is only out of it that true understanding can be forged. I chose not to tie my entire being onto falsehoods that have endured for so long that they are no longer distinguishable from the truth.

The discovery of your ignorance is the most impactful event in becoming an adult. The simple act of admitting that you do not know everything, nay, you do not know anything, and that your life’s duty is a humble seeking for knowledge.

Does that sound very simple? Yet a majority of us never get to experience it. Observe yourself carefully for a month and you will begin to realize how much your ego has covered your ignorance. Deep down, we are aware of our ignorance, our sheer nakedness. But in our entire lives, we never dare admit it.

Because admitting that we do not know makes us feel weak and vulnerable.

The lie of absoluteness is the first injustice done to a human being. As children, society gives us a few ‘facts’ about self, the world, and our destiny. Then they convince us that these ‘facts’ are all we need to know.

And so upon the first contact with uncertainty, these feeble facts fall apart, leaving us with no center to hold us together. When reality disapproves of every neat fact that we know, we lose momentum and are left wobbling in indecisions and indirection.

I know that I don't know

Life can be a stimulating journey of discovery. There are realms of reality about which we are fully ignorant. If you only get to shine your candle of consciousness in this universe once, why not embolden your soul with that shining beacon that is the honor of the human spirit – knowledge?

Admitting ignorance at first destabilizes us. The realization that most of the beliefs and thoughts you have had your whole life are inconsistent with reality can be devastating. You feel as though the thin layer of ice on which you have been standing has broken and you are sinking into the vast ocean below.

You are lucky if this experience happens in your twenties or earlier before your beliefs have firmly consolidated into your self-definition. Disentangling your beliefs from your ego is painful and uncomfortable, but once it happens, it allows you to become a child again and begin learning.

As it should be

What then, should be our response to the sheer tragedy of reality and life itself?

All learning and thinking leads us to one conclusion: that life is difficult. We all suffer despite everything; in fact, philosophy gives us the wisdom that life itself is suffering.

This reality has become increasingly manifest to me in my twenties. It made me angry and frustrated at first. It did not make sense why a species capable of pain would be left to suffer on a lonely mote of dust somewhere on the edge of the universe. Is there any meaning to it all? What is the point of the suffering? To take fragile breaths knowing that it could all be taken away any minute. To worry about the future. To have an awareness of eternity trapped inside a finite existence.

However, while a sip of reality conjured these thoughts and made me anxious, insight and hope awaited me at the bottom of the glass.

A careful consideration of the apparent tragedy of existence began to give an optimistic apprehension about life. Yes, life involves pain, but would it be meaningful if we didn’t feel pain? Is a state of unbounded bliss one that we want?

And as for suffering, should we wish it away? Isn’t suffering the very seed of love? We possibly wouldn’t be able to experience the encompassing, piercing enthralls of love if we didn’t know suffering.

And death, too. Isn’t our mortality a gift? It is the awareness of the finitude of life that impels us to value it. If you knew that you would live for a thousand years you would probably waste 990 of them. It is the awareness that you have limited time that enables you to infuse as much meaning as possible into each day you have. A lifetime of seventy years lived well is better than a thousand years of emptiness.

The brevity of life should not scare us or cause us angst. It should instead provide us with a sense of urgency. The realization that you do not have forever is a cue to live each day as if it matters.

In there also lies the first secret to fulfillment and impact. My goal is to pack as much learning, laughter, adventure, love, and impact as possible into this life. And tomorrow is not assured either, so I choose to begin today. What a thrilling ride that can be!

What a worthwhile experience it is when a person chooses to make the most of this life. We have an opportunity to have the light of our consciousness shine across the universe. It may be for a blink of an eye at a cosmic scale, but it is all that we have got. There seems to be no better choice than to make sure that it burns bright.

Following his battle with cancer, Apple founder Steve Jobs noted,

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

The awareness of our mortality should not cause us to be anxious, but prudent and bold. ‘Almost everything,’ he said,

…all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

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These tussles with reality have been central to the growth I experienced in my early twenties.

I began from a place of anger and anxiety at what I saw as the unfairness and unreliability of reality. I was a frustrated young man during my early days in university when I grappled with the question of my identity and the larger questions of purpose and destiny. As I began to realize that no one else except myself could give me the answers I wanted, I began a desperate search.

My first stop was the Bible, which I read back to back in my second year in university. We used to have an idyllic chapel at the Eastern edge of the campus grounds; here I often knelt and prayed for answers. This spiritual commitment provided the reassurance and peace I desperately needed at the time. My soul, however, yearned for more.

Then books came to the rescue. In the early days of my third year, I read a book by a Jewish professor of History, Yuval Harari, titled Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. That book revolutionized my understanding of the world - and reality. It helped me realize that there were vast oceans of knowledge and insight that I had never known existed.

Like most people, I had spent my life playing in the sand on the shore instead of jumping right into this vast ocean.

It was also my first experience with a mental discipline I would have to hold henceforth – holding two or more contradicting ideas in my mind and being fine with it.

This causes people discomfort. They prefer a singular story, the assumption that there is one idea that explains everything.

I think that that is too narrow a way to live.

Explore all the knowledge that is out there and learn. I prefer to be like a collector who gathers marbles of all kinds then comes back to the lab and sorts them out. Learn everything you encounter and then you will have the wherewithal to choose what works in different situations.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything appears to you like a nail; I have found that diverse learning gives me versatility in life. Moreover, the reason why we do not explore is that we are afraid of ideas.

Why is it strange that after reading Stephen Hawking I still find solace in Saint Paul’s letters? That I can find Sam Harris and Stephen Fry intriguing and still be moved by Luke?

When you begin to respect your intellect, it will surprise you how much learning it is capable of. And who’s to tell what doors might fling open for you afterward?

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it.” – Lowell Bennion.