Level 7

MARCH 21

Now I begin to understand the meaning of the problem ‘to be or not to be’. Till now I only thought of being somebody. Earlier today I enjoyed the thrill of becoming a major, of being somebody more exalted than I was yesterday. ‘To be or not to be’ seemed to me a vague, meaningless sort of question, good for philosophers or writers but of no interest to ordinary practical people. ‘I am’ was a simple fact, beyond any dispute just because it was a fact; whereas what I was might have been a problem, one of practical significance, because my rank, my social level, my health, any number of things about me were liable to change.

But the more I think about it, the more this idea of being, pure being, loses its simple form and collects around it other ideas. It begins to mean breathing fresh air, walking in the sunshine, and in the rain too—enjoying the sensation of existence.

Well then, is life down here being—or is it not-being? Is not Level 7 a sort of Hades or Sheol where being is dimmed to half-being, at the best? I can breathe, but is this fresh air? I can walk, but I cannot go for a walk. As for sunshine—I had better forget it. I feel that I feel, but I don’t really—not in the spontaneous way I used to up there.

Am I condemned to half-be for the rest of my life? To half-be a major, to be sure. But I would rather revert to private and be. I would prefer to be an absolute nobody than to half-be what I am.

It is very odd that I had to be brought down into the depths of the earth in order to discover the meaning of half a line of Shakespeare. There must have been a philosopher, a Hamlet lurking in me all the time, and I never suspected it. I did not once ponder about the meaning of being, as long as I was. Now, when my life can hardly qualify as being, I begin to understand….

Understand what? The meaning of being? Nonsense, nobody knows the meaning of that. But now at least I understand the meaninglessness of being somebody. And I realise the significance of being, without knowing what being is. My soul—what is left of it—cries: “To be, to be!”

But the loudspeaker sounds: “Attention please, attention.”