Slings and Arrows

It is some weeks now since a disabling (and possibly fatal) blow has been delivered to my . A blow delivered with such intensity and collective malevolence to evoke Hamlet’s :”to be or not to be”.

 

Media are full of “friends” and kind souls with uniformly “happy endings” all neatly wrapped up in attention grabbing discrete chunks (30 minutes to 2 hours). Guardian angels coming to bring solace and the all  important hope.

Alas, these are fiction ,very nice and soothing fiction but fiction nonetheless. I sit alone, broken and ashamed of the stress and my human frailty has wrought on those people I love. They are my heroes and I have let them down.

So, Martin Luther kings words resonate as does Hamlet Act III scene I:

 

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 heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die- to sleep.
To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, 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,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death-
The undiscover’d 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 rememb’red.

 

Peace and hope to all.