"To be or not to be" - is the wrong question!

A little background:
Any living form, be it a simple one cell organism or a form as complex as a well developed human being is bound by the limitation of its physical existence. However enlightened a living form might appear, fundamentally any will avoid obvious and purposeless danger of being hurt or killed. Physical pain is the utmost primitive damage to a living form. Instinctively any form will avoid physical pain if possible or try to minimize it. Fundamentally, if one used an advanced microscope to zoom into its surroundings or even to his own feet as certain point during this zooming process one would arrive a sub-atomic level where he/she could not pinpoint where his/her feet ends and floor begins. At this level all existence is interaction of energy which transmits in wave/vibrations.

Now, we do not operate at these levels of relative existence although interaction at this level goes on nevertheless. If all of human navigation tools (feel, smell, taste, vision all recorded into memory and if persistent or powerful enough developed into intuition) operated at these subatomic levels our organism would cease to to exist. Such view of relative existence defines the life of a living form. At a fundamentally sub-atomic level, nothing begins or ends. But on the outside (relative view where microscope is zoomed out to clearly identify distinct cells) you notice some cells dissolving while others continue on as before. You zoom out some more, and this turns our to be persons toe falling off because of frostbites. Clearly something is dying but overall organism (human organism as a whole) is continuing its existence. Relativity of existence is absolutely vital to claims of live and death.

When does a living form call himself "I" thus differentiating itself from the rest? You do not need to have a comprehensive self-awareness to see yourself separate from the rest. An ant can to certain degree identify its separation from other ants when it picks up a piece of wheat or when a kid brings a lit match to their trail and ants disperse to save their living forms. But such primitive self-awareness is only limited to expression at times of immediate danger to existence. The less aware a living form is of its self the more it will rely on physical limitation of existence thus living by hard-coded instincts of self-preservation and comfort.

It has taken millions of years and trial-&-errors for our physical environment to produce a form as complex as a human organism. Eco-environment of our planet is a largely defined by our planets gravitational force sicne its the most powerful of the ones our physical bodies experience. If one was to remove 20% of earth mass in an instance we would all probably feel much lighted as our supportive muscles had been previously used to carrying 20% more weight. A few 100s of thousands years with 20% less gravitation and we would probably become become taller and thinner. Our current physical form is 100% product of our physical environment. Our current physical form is the most suitable form of living given as much of evolutionary trial-&-errors as our ancestor one cell form has undergone. An argument that anti-evolutioners promote asking why there are still monkeys if we have originated fom them is too simple and clear for those "bible story used to" narrow-heads to become aware. From a pool of all monkey type living forms a certain type of monkey that was superior to other monkeys developed further as others were left in their "monkey stage". The same reason is applicable to any living form that has less developed ancestor living alongside. Why do fish only live in water but allegators can also live on land? Why didn't all fish developed into allegators if fish is to be considered allegator ancestor? Simply because, from a pool of all fish like forms certain fish types developed superior abilities through evolutionary trial-&-errors that led them to a more advanced living form, while others got stuck in their "fish form".

The more self-aware an organism the less it will rely on hard-coded instincts of survival. The ultimate result of development of self-awareness is surprisingly a point of absolute disregard to self and absolute regard to surrounding living forms. Why? Because the pinnacle of self-awareness is a moment of realization that self matters not and that self is a part of something much larger which is stupifyingly hard to imagine for our minds conditioned by physical existence.

Humans at current stage of evolutionary development are still too attached to hard-coded self-preservation instincts. Nothing guarantees that we will change much from our current state. The largest hurdles are donctrines that set rules for social behavior. Within those are religions that take advantage of human condition of fear of pain and death to initially scare you with horrow stories of hell and sin and then offer you a solution by introducing the notions of heaven and afterlive. All in all an effective methodology, but they seem to have underestimated side-effects that are also product of human condition such as how desperate you are to go to heaven (dying for religious cause), how empty is your current existence (anything short of dying for religious cause) and how much of a narrow-head you are while reading religious texts (killing others for religious cause).

Now back to the question of "To be or not to be":

1) Who gives a damn !?
One has to be such a ego-maniac drowning in his/her own grandious image to be asking such a question. In actuality, no one other than those who experience love/kinship/attachment (call it whateve you want) give a damn about you. 300,000 people die every single day for whatever reason. That is 200 poeple per minute or 3.5 per second. Who cries for them? Parents, relative and friends - all who had attachment to this person. So, the real question is: Am I such a eco-maniac to inflict unnesessary pain on those who love me, but taking my own life?

2) You can't take it anymore!?
One has to be such a delusional to assume his/her condition is so much different than those of 7,000,000,000 people go to sleep and wake up everyday. Whatever the hell you are experiencing is bound to be reflected in your personal and emotional development. So, if you are smart and positive you might not repeat similar mistakes in the future. The same status-quo (without anyone asking you) which which you were brought to life should be kept throughout your life. Your misery with the exception of physical pain, is all in your head. It starts and ends in your head. So, as Obama put it, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start rebuilding yourself (in his case America). You current state of mind is a combination of random events and people with time applied to it all. You can ask why it happened to you as that is a lgitimate questions. If you could understand the following you would not have been bothering with such questions. Think of religious a muslim who once found caught a fish that has patterns on it similar to word allah (god) in arabic. The next day it was washed photographed and all over the local news. He of course saw intention on this incident. He felt God was sending signs to him. Now, think of billions of fish that are swimming in oceans, seas, lakes and rivers. One fish in a billion happened to have that pattern means nothing statistically. The event is not even significant to a christian who would have made a nice grill out of the fish. So, think of yourself as that muslim who happens to have stumbled and gotten hurt by consequence of events and feels like its brought upon him/her and ask why. Statistically if you divide you life into hours of existence, then 99% of the time you are doing a routine stuff that you seem to be ok with and when some stuff happens in the other 1% that you are in contempt with. That 1% might be exceptional for you, but it is absolutely insignificant and normal considering 99% of the time "ok" stuff happens to you. That 1% can be considered an outlier event that is part of any normal distribution of events that is connected to natural/physical existence. In contrast Wall Street valuation models that cyclically fail to correctly value assets are dealing with even more outlier events (more like 10%) since those models can get pretty hypothetical and disconnected from natural/physical events. Nassim Taleb calls it "Black Swan" events that happen rarely but have tremendous effect on the system. So, the best thing you can do is stop thinking of the 1% as somthing incredibly unjust that has been put upon you and look at it with the remaining 99% in mind. So, the real question is: Is it really exceptional that something unusually painful and extraordinary has happened to you?

3) After you realize that by taking choosing "not to be" you inflict pain on other who are attached to you and that there is nothing unusual in that something very painful has happened to you, the question to ask is how to be!

The answer is you have to learn to make the best of it. We are hard-coded by our genes to be the way we are. If you have a bad sense of humor, it is becuase you don't find life as amusing as some one else does. It does not mean you are inferior to them. Traditional Japanese culture for example does not put as much value in humor as does American culture. Think of youself as part of something larger like the universe. However separate and significant your existence might appear, it is as significant as one ray of a star in a constellation of billions of starts. That is not to marginalize your share of the whole but to switch your focus away from the individuality of your human experience to something that is happenning some place to someone else in a similar fashion. This will help you wipe away notions of predestined faith, individuality of pain and free you mind to experience so much more that the universe will introduce to you in combination of random events in the future. Be ready for it! Stories of successful people like Buffet, Gates, Ghandi or Obama for that matter ignore millions of other who try and fail. No one tells stories of those who are uncessessful. Those who are successful will point to decision and efforts they made to succeed. That is normal. In reality they ignore 99% of others who did exactly the same but never succeeded because not all of the components were there. Consider three magnificent circle highways. One circle is time. The second one is composed of people. And the third environment. Each circle highway moves along their respective circulat paths. Each highway resident (person, time and environment) makes a complete trip around the circle in one second. All three circles cross as one point. Every second one person happens to cross the intersection, as certain time with certain environment which produces certain result. Well 99% of those results are marriages, daily lives, car accidents, graduations, famaily dinners and the other 1% are Microsoft, Obama victory and Buffet billions. For those who are siuccessful to claim that they could have done something else given certain conditions, but they made correct decision and thus are successful is ABSOLUTE bull crap. If they were put through exact same situation repeatedly, they would have acted the exact same way. Its human condition to be drawn to grandiousity (most famously Muhammed, Jesus and Moses who were delusional ego-maniacs [all went to meditate in caves and probably brought some hashish with them] enough to think they were so great to say what others should do). So, enjoy it! If you are drawn to grandiosity that brings others joy, do it! If do not, find something that would!

CHOSE TO BE NOT BECAUSE THAT'S RIGHT THING TO DO. BUT BECAUSE, YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU ARE GOING TO AT THE INTERSECTION AND BE THE OTHER 1%. 1% BEING WHATEVER YOU CONSIDER SUCCESS/COOL/GOOD/CONFORTABLE/NICE/HAPPY ETC...

That I think is worth the effort...