The following is an excerpt from D. E. Harding's book.

To learn more about Harding or read more, visit here for an additional passage, here for the "Spiritual Giants" section, and here for his web site.

I hesitate to say exactly what Hamlet means (or what Shakespeare meant Hamlet to mean) by his famous soliloquy 'To be or not to be - that is the question'. Shakespearean scholars will tell you. What it means to me is as follows.

I have a choice, at times an agonizing choice between two evils.

On the one hand is life - life which is sweet and sour, pleasurable and very painful, sometimes easy but usually difficult and sometimes excruciatingly difficult.

On the other hand is death, which presents itself as relief from pain - at the cost of annihilation and endless oblivion, and it's a terrifying prospect.

Put it like this: to exist is nasty, while to cease to exist is at least as nasty, but in a different way.

So here's the dilemma I'm faced with: shall I go on living the life I'm living, or shall I opt out of it, either by drugging myself into a stupor (and there are countless approved and disapproved opiates to choose from) or by killing myself outright?

In brief, to be or not to be - that is the question that's tearing my life apart. Of all questions this is the one that demands an answer.

Here's mine in a nutshell . . .