To be… or not? It’s more a prying anxiety than a question. Nonetheless, Hamlet thought it meaningful enough to ask. It’s one of the strangest “verbs” I’ve come across, and I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it even is one. This verb has become more than just a word to analyze through Sparknotes. It’s become the greatest and perhaps most insurmountable skill I’ve learned: to be; or, rather, the “will to being.” I’ve come to call any obstacles in my career a “will to being” as I believe that to truly “be” or “exist” in life means to surrender comfort. I could have learned isolated hurdling instead of picking up the discus—a sport unfit for my body frame of 6’1. I’d be blind to the harshness of reality and see nothing but infinite bliss. But, it would be meaningless. I’m fortunate to have won many battles. Yet, I’m more than the result, I am the struggle that comes with it. Without obstacles, my journeys would be colorless. Without the will to being, I would not be.