To Design or Not to Design - Emulation of Hamlet's Third Soliloquy

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To design or not to design - that is the question

Whether 'tis better to follow dreams

And risk not having enough money,

Or not take that leap of faith,

And, by engineering, playing it safe.

 

To avoid the risk--

No more - and by taking the risk I say to face

The preparation for the skills I must learn

The actuality of failing--

'Tis a situation

I do not hope to face.

 

To engineer, to not design--

To take the safety route. Ay, there's the issue,

For in playing it safe what opportunities may pass

When we are hiding from the failures that may come

Must make us halt and ponder.

 

That's the belief

That makes problems of not taking a chance to design.

For who really wants defeat,

The boring job,

The coworkers depressing aura,

The confinement and lack of imagination,

 

And the bleak looks

That my fellow engineers send in my day-dreaming direction,

When they too may dream

Without other's judgement?

 

Who would heed the dreamer's call

To wait and anticipate that chance of a lifetime,

But that the terror of missing out on making a dream come true by not taking a chance

The unknown opportunities of being a fashion designer

The possibilities missed,

While we return to our boring lives,

Wishing we had been fashion designers

Instead of taking the risk of making it come true?

 

Thus the thought of failure does make cowards of us all,

And thus the comfort of being an engineer

Is ruined with thoughts of being a fashion designer,

And thoughts of serenity because we're in our comfort zone

 

With this regard their peace is stolen away

And lose the contentment of being an engineer, disguised as lost dreams in favor of the possibility of being a fashion designer.

 

(based on Hamlet's third soliloquy)

 

 

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