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It's worth staying around for the good times
Sunday, 22 January 2006
Let's face it, sometimes life can be truly awful. Horrible things happen in the world, often for no apparent reason. Nobody can avoid some level of pain or misery in life, although some receive more than others.
Every day ordinary people face circumstances of extraordinary cruelty. People we love die, those we trust cheat us, we get sick, we go broke, people are nasty to us for no good reason, or we just feel terrible for reasons we don't understand. The list of things that can and do go wrong is long. And these things aren't rare.
Life can be a terrible struggle. Sometimes, everyone but a pathological optimist has to ask themselves the obvious question - is it worth going on?
The most famous lines of the most famous play by the most famous writer in English deals with exactly this question. For that is what Shakespeare's Hamlet was contemplating when he said:
"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?"
But I think there is a reason to go on, no matter how bad and hopeless things seem. And that's because no matter who we are, and how much the world seems to hate us, it sometimes give us some of its good things. And some of them are so good that it's unbelievable how lucky we are to get them, if even for only a short time.
Think of the times in your life when you've experienced love, kindness and friendship. The feeling you get when you listen to your favorite music, watch a great movie, eat a delicious meal or sleep a good night's sleep.
The natural beauty of the world - the oceans, the forests, the sunsets, the thunderstorms, the snowfields. The wonderful art that's been created by humanity, the great books, the sports we have available to us, the festivals and live entertainment.
Picture, if you can, all the good things that would be lost if a meteorite struck the Earth and wiped out all life and civilization. If it all just vanished into the void - from the paintings of da Vinci, to the films of Steven Spielberg, the games of tennis and football, right down to the simple hamburger. Your family, your best friends from school, your pets, your favorite places, your most treasured music. Gone - all destroyed in a random moment.
What a terrible loss that would be.
And you were here to witness and experience all those wonderful things. Some of the best that life has to offer was bought to right to you.
Sometimes we have to be a bit philosophical about it all. Life can be a drag sometimes. Any honest person will admit it. But mixed in with the bad times are some amazingly good things - even if we don't get to experience them as much as we'd like. At least we get them sometimes.
It's worth staying around just for those precious moments.
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