An elder, hearing the word of the wise man among the English who asked whether “to be or not to be” is the question, said: “The question is fair, but not complete, for one word is still lacking: to be what?”
And he added: “For it is not merely a matter of being or ceasing to be, but of being that which you were made to be, or remaining that which the passions and the forgetfulness of God have made of you. The man who fears only death has not yet understood the harder question — that he may be alive in body and dead in soul, walking like a shadow among shadows, never having arrived at his true self.”
He said again: “Hamlet feared ‘what dreams may come’ after the sleep of death, and in this he spoke as a man, not as a Christian. For we do not fear dreams, but await an awakening — and that awakening will show not whether we were or were not, but whom we resembled while we were: the image with which we were born, or the image the passions wove for us.”
And he concluded: “So the true question is not to be or not to be, but: to be yourself, united with Christ, or to be nothing but a shadow of yourself, estranged from it. This is the true death to fear — not the ceasing of breath, but the ceasing of likeness.”
