From the Afterlife

What role does facing challenges have in making life-altering choices?

Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you that one of the most difficult problems
you will ever face is that of love. Not just today, but 428 years ago, William
Shakespeare was contemplating the difficulties of love. I am delighted to welcome
you to The Afterlife: Generation H(eaven). Speaks Out, my name is Romeo from
the realm of the deceased, and I want to discuss one of William Shakespeare's most
renowned plays, Romeo and Juliet. It's about me and my lover, if you haven't
guessed. Being in the hereafter has taught me a great deal. True love, as is
frequently said, never runs smoothly since life is full of hardships, and my love is
no exception. Love does not solve all of your issues; in fact, it exacerbates them.
Romeo and Juliet is arguably the most renowned love story of all time, and love is
the play's fundamental topic. Despite the fact that it was written over 400 years
ago, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is still relevant today, as it covers the themes
of love and how love is a never-ending roller coaster with ups and downs. I've
learned a valuable lesson from being here about the importance of facing
challenges when making decisions that could change your life. By accepting
challenges, we can stretch ourselves and see what we are capable of.

Finding your "true love" does not automatically solve all of your problems.
It actually causes more challenges. Trust me, I've learned that the hard way. When I
invited myself to the party at the House of Capulet, a beautiful girl, Juliet Capulet,
caught my eye across the room. Oh, what a beautiful girl she was. We experienced
love at first sight. The first challenge we faced was that I was from the house of
Capulet and that beauty Juliet was from the enemy house, Montague. That was
certainly a problem. We didn’t know what to do. Before she knew I was the most
dreaded enemy of the Capulets, Juliet had already fallen in love with me, and her
love for me will almost certainly bring us tragedy. We made the choice that
impacted the rest of our life. Within 24 hours we had found someone to get us
married. The Great Friar Laurence. The cause of our death. He is now my maid in
the afterlife and sleeps in a tomb. A dark rat infested tomb. It’s really comfy don’t
worry. Anyways. We faced the challenge of belonging in enemy households, and
he eventually married us because he believed our marriage will "turn your
household's rancor to pure love." If only I'd known back then that wasn't the case.
Ultimately, our marriage caused a slew of other issues that turned into other life
changing choices.

Love is hard enough with normal challenges. When faced with a challenge,
we often do not think before acting, and we are then faced with life-altering
choices. Sometimes when we have to make a big choice, we lose perception of the
big picture. That is what happened to us. My and Juliet's relationship was not
without challenges. Each decision we made led to another life-altering choice. We
realized at the end of our marriage that it couldn't be peaceful ,and that a tragic end
was nearly inevitable. Juliet stretched herself to take a sleeping potion to be with
me instead of Paris. The misunderstanding of Friar Lawrence's letter to me about
Juliet's 'fake' death drove me to make the life alerting choice to be with Juliet in the
afterlife. I could not imagine living without her. I didn't get the message from Friar
Lawrence that Juliet only consumed a sleeping potion; instead, his servant
informed me that Juliet had died. Now that I think about it, I could have taken a
step back, looked at the bigger picture and waited a little longer because Juliet
wouldn't kill herself. It would have been nice to see our family's feud end too.
Instead, our family feud pushed us to our limits, allowing us to see what we were
capable of. Fate had conspired against us, preventing us from being together. We
loved each other, but because of our long-standing family dispute and other
challenges, it was practically impossible for us to be together. In the end, we were
able to be together only in death.

Facing so many challenges drove Juliet and I to our deaths. Tragically, not
much has evolved since Shakespeare's time. Conflicts between families are
examples of how human behavior hasn't changed much over time. The great
Shakespeare has given us all the chance to learn from our story and realize that
even if we do find true love, there will inevitably be ups and downs, and that we
should enjoy every day because it might be our last. In the end Juliet and I
accepted every challenge that was thrown at us and we stretched ourselves to the
end to see what we were capable of.