‘No one can tell you exactly what you have got to be,

You got to stand your ground and practice in your life’  - Jimmy Barnes

 

 

A couple of months ago I read ‘An Interpretation of Murder’ – a mystery thriller set in turn of the century New York, and featuring Freud and Jung. Fascinating and enthralling book, not the least due to the main protagonist’s obsession with Hamlet and the dilemma of  “to be or not to be”.  While the book is long gone, the obsession remains. After all it is one of those enduring questions, one of the most enigmatic lines Shakespeare ever wrote…

 

 

 

 

 

By the end of ‘An Interpretation of Murder’ the main character believes he has it – what Hamlet, what Shaky means in the classic soliloquy- to be or not to be – this is the dilemma that faces us all once we realise that we are acting out – once we get to know ourselves and the discourses that we embody.

 

To be or not to be – not so much about life and death. Not so much about choosing to live or die, but rather choosing either to be what we know ourselves to be or choosing to be that which we don’t know, choosing ‘not to be’.

 

To be or not to be. Or perhaps to be both - ’to be’ that which we are as a discursively constructed self, and ‘not to be’ that self – to ‘be’ something else at the same time. This is the path. This is the tightrope. This is the adventure, the excitement. It is on this path, this tightrope, this line between being and not-being that there is intensity of experience.

 

‘To be’ is to be the socially constructed be-ing.  We are all this, we all are this.  We have learnt a language, more then one, we understand a myriad of signs; words, symbols, looks, associations, movement, gesture. As we sense we interpret.  This is to be – to be that which we are, that which we have BE-COME between birth and now.

 

And what about being MORE than we have become? Or less? What about not-being.  Can we remember who we are? Find our original face before our parents were born?

 

 

What is not-to-be and how is this possible? How can we ‘not be’ who we are? How do we escape from the constructed self? And why would we want to? Perhaps just to discover what is there?  What exists when all that I have be-come is taken away?

 

nothing?

freedom?

the circle of life?

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x