There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so
I loved Hamlet when I studied it at school (and uni) – it’s got everything that teenagers love.
Injustice, rebelling against parents/the system, the adolescent psychodrama, murder!
This quote comes when his two university friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, come to visit.
He asks what they’ve done to deserve being sent to see him in the prison of Denmark and they say they don’t see it as a prison.
Hamlet then makes the famous remark above, highlighting what wholly subjective creatures we are.
As in the well worn phrase, one person’s heaven is another’s hell.
We can’t change the events of our personal stories, but we can change the narrative themes or the morals of the stories.
We can apply whatever meaning we want to events.
Rather than something being a disaster or an embarrassment, we can see it as a stepping stone to greater knowledge or understanding.
If we refrain from making negative judgments about our daily life events, we can liberate ourselves from much unnecessary suffering.
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