"To Be or Not To Be..." ~ What is it that makes life worth living?

"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 heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. 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…”

~ Shakespeare, Hamlet

Shakespeare asked the questions, Mark Rothko painted them and Albert Camus postulated this in Myth of Sisyphus: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”

To Be or Not To Be...

 If one after pondering, reflecting and struggling with this philosophical problem at the end of the day answers -yes! Yes, life is worth living! What then does this life worth living consists of? What is it that makes life worth living?

In the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen's song Reason To Believe Bruce sings:

“In a whitewash shotgun shack an old man passes away
Take his body to the graveyard and over him they pray
Lord won't you tell us tell us what does it mean
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe…”

What does abundant life or simply life mean?

What in the final analysis is the determinative factor in choosing to live? Is it a lack of courage in our essential existentialism that many feign at the real prospect of death, in the ultimate act of autonomy – to take one’s life? Or is it a splendid realization of the wonder of living and to exit early would be a too difficult a choice?

I don’t know and in the not knowing there is only existing, a floating in our experiences.

Yet… the philosophical problem remains and begs for a hearing -  to be considered and contemplated…"To be or not to be..."