To sit or not to sit, an ode not by Hamlet

[mike]

Check out the article on the resource page. submitted on behalf: Dr Stephen Legg

To sit, or not to sit – that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to stand or to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous posture, or to arise and take arms against a sea of convention, and by opposing, end it.

To sit – to stand? No….. More…… ; and by sit and stand we say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.

To sit – to stand? To sit – perchance to move: ay, there’s the rub! For in that sitting of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause to sit alone. There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of sitting time, th’ oppressor’s seat, the proud man’s executive chair, the pangs of despis’d sitting, the insolence of the sitting office, and the spurns that patients of th’ unworthy makes, when he himself might both sit and stand with an electronic height-adjustable desk?

Who would these fixed seats bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, with musculoskeletal discomfort dread, or even death – the undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no constant sitter returns.

It puzzles the will that we rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of? Thus sitting conscience does make standing cowards of us all. And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of sedentariness, and enterprises of great standing and moment, in this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.

Soft you now!

The fair sitter – nymph-like – should also stand and in thy motion sitting pains will be only sins rememb’red.

[Author]

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