To Be or Not to Be

             Each day, yet another heap of words flows out of society, a billion pictures of a billion minds all flowing into the hearts of a people who mock it.  Today this work will join them, tomorrow, another work by another writer will follow.  But, each time we cast off into this realm of words, our anchor ropes to this reality of ous hold fast, and the dockmen shout to us : "Why?"  Why waste our finite lives trying to explore when there is work to do and bills to pay?  Why does this thing called literature matter enough to call us out of the world?  Why?

          As time passes, all things flow.  The floating log became the raft, the raft became the trireme, which in turn evolved to the galleon, to the ironclad, and finally to the great steelhulled ships which travel the waters of today.  As time passes, all things flow.  But even as these ships flow from one design to the next, somehow the same steadfast technologies have been used each and every time throughout history, the same theories and thoughts that have lived since that first log that persist today, passed down by this thing called literature.  The same holds true with humanity.  There is not a human in history that has not loved, that has not been hated, that has not been handed great expectations and told to meet them.  There is no one living or dead that has not been ridiculed and worshiped, that has not betrayed and been betrayed.  When we look into literature, we can hear an author's telling of this bittersweet tale, and can see how they have lived their lives, and from them, learn how to live ours.  it is that that empowers literature, that one statement that makes those who excel at literature, excel at life.

          When queries come to literature, all lines of thought trail to one final question: To Be or Not to Be?  There is really no other question that can be asked of literature, for when the time comes to choose between knowledge and ignorance, the time has come to set life in motion.  If we are held by the anchor-ropes to our solid and tangible world, held to lives of questions that need answering but unable to look into past and present for support, then we will fall, because, just as unity with our fellows is our greatest strengh, solitude is our greatest failing, and it is for this that literature is essential to society, because it provides this conduit between life today and yesterday, between today and tomorrow, between those who have not chosen to be, and those who have.

         

 

          

Reviews

[AlieahRose]

WOW...
THIS WAS AMAZING...
I AM SPEECHLESS...
YOU HAVE TAKEN A PHRASE...
SO OVER LOOKED...
AND MADE IT...
UNIVERSAL...
AMAZING...