To Whine or Not To Whine

by

Jimmy Walter

To whine or not to whine: that is the question:

Whether 'tis merely in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of exaggerated misfortune,

Or to take reason against a charade of catastrophes,

And by disputing end them? To see: to awake;

No more; and by awaking to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand imagined shocks

That ego is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To see, to awake;

To awake: perchance to soar: aye there's delight;

For in that dawn of insight what heights may come

When we have shuffled off our moral foil,

Must give us hope. There's the respect

That makes equanimity for a long life;

For who wouldn’t bear the whips and scorns of mistresses,

The oppressor's prong, the proud man's costumes,

The pangs of disprized lust, the law's decay,

The insolence of oriface, and the time

That patient merit that everyone deserves,

When he himself might his own mind quiet

With but a fair appraisal? Who wouldn't old farts bear,

And laugh and play even under a weary life,

Since logic slays the dread of things here and after death,

That undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns (Hawaii, Tahiti, perhaps Fuji?), frees the will,

And let's us bear rather well those ills we have

Than fly to others that we imagine less?

Thus intellect doth make heroes of us all;

And thus the native hue of disillusion

Is taken o'er by the hale heart of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents surge, then fly,

And take the name of action!