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Day 2652, thus.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus spoke Zarathustra
Zarathustra’s Speeches/On the three metamorphoses

Of three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.

There is much that is difficult for the spirit, the strong reverent spirit that would bear much: but the difficult and the most difficult are what its strength demands.  What is difficult? asks the spirit that would bear much, and kneels down like a camel wanting to be well loaded. What is most difficult, 0 heroes, asks the spirit that would bear much, that I may take it upon myself and exult in my strength? Is it not humbling oneself to wound one’s haughtiness? Letting one’s folly shine to mock one’s wisdom?

Or is it this: parting from our cause when it triumphs? Climbing high mountains to tempt the tempter?

Or is it this: feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge and, for the sake of the truth, suffering hunger in one’s soul?

Or is it this: being sick and sending home the comforters and making friends with the deaf, who never hear what you want?

Or is it this: stepping into filthy waters when they are the waters of truth, and not repulsing cold frogs and hot toads?

Or is it this: loving those who despise us and offering a hand to the ghost that would frighten us?

All these most difficult things the spirit that would bear much takes upon itself: like the camel that, burdened, speeds into the desert, thus the spirit speeds into its desert.

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Day 2651, the time when.

Daily picture, Philosophy

It is hard to make decisions in a world, or better said, a universe that doesn’t care about you, that has no plan or conscious direction. Do I move here or there, and shall I take that job? These questions matter to you and maybe some people around you, but none of the people you meet on the street that day are thinking about your choices. It is personal to you, and your choice will only make a small wrinkle around you that no one further away from you will notice.   

Your choice is trivial in the greater scheme of things and, in that sense, also for your life. Yes, moving to another city will change your life, but the factual choice to go, yes or no, is meaningless because either way, your life goes on, and only your opinion of that life matters; almost no one else cares remember. You can, and probably will, make sense of either choice, and when it turns out to be a bad choice, well… this might put more pressure on your next choice. Still, the fact is also that you never will know how life would have gone if you made the other choice; in this case, you can only compare your so-called bad direction with an imaginary other direction.

There are no objectively good decisions in life because there are no written rules or blueprints of how life should be. It’s probably best to throw dice or tap into your memories and feel how it was when you were eight and wandered around attracted by directions you didn’t even know were there, the time when the directions made the decisions.

Day 2650, behind the curtains.

Daily picture, Philosophy

The idea of a crossroad where I sit down, waiting for a clue, is something I came up with yesterday while sitting down to write something. Today I looked around at the world and the people I met and wondered: do they ever think about their life in metaphors. I don’t get the impression that they do due to how they answer my probing questions and react to my remarks. But they might have their own reasons to hide that part of their life from me and maybe the rest of the world. Perhaps this is due to their character, life experience, or just my faulty interpretation.

I rarely ask someone directly what they think of me and my ideas. It might be me, but that is not something we do in the society I live in. Only children, drunkards, or otherwise intoxicated people seem to ask these kinds of direct questions.

I wish I could be a kid again and ask the people in the store if they ever sit at a crossroad in life, waiting for an answer. Why and when do we change from being a child, full of wonder and little shame, into these buttoned-up so-called grownups with our wonder tamed and locked inside behind the curtains.  

Day 2649, choices.

Daily picture, Philosophy

For the last twenty-five years, I have been at a crossroad. After a while, I realized I better sit down, realizing it would be a long wait. It took even longer to learn where the different roads would lead to but to be honest, I am still not sure.

Somewhere during that time, I wrote down that I was pretty lucky. I at least realized there was a crossroad where I was; so many people only find this out when they are a long way in one or another direction. Looking back, they only see the decisions they could have made, waving at me from a distance. But maybe there is something to say for hindsight instead of unclear foresight. I let life decide a lot of directions; I am pretty sure I even believe that I choose most of them willingly and freely; they are mostly related to the mundane parts of life, like where to live and what job to take to pay the bills. The crossroad I am sitting on, waiting, decides the direction…it determines how you deal with your own consciousness in a corrupt(ting) society and maybe even a corrupt human nature.

Many people pass me where I sit and tell me that they know that there is nothing to know, and they go on to live for their own till an empty end where they take their contradictions with them into their oblivion. Others are certain of the direction to take, joining all the others on that path as individuals in a traffic jam. The certainty that leads you on this path is the other side of the first one; they both have the same value, but only for the believer.

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Day 2644, protection.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond good and evil
Our virtues

226 We immoralists! – This world as it concerns us, in which we need to love and be afraid, this almost invisible, inaudible world of subtle command, subtle obedience, a world of the “almost” in every respect, twisted, tricky, barbed, and loving: yes, it is well defended against clumsy spectators and friendly curiosity! We have been woven into a strong net and shirt of duties, and cannot get out of it –, in this sense we are “people of duty,” – even us! It is true that we sometimes dance quite well in our “chains” and between our “swords”; it is no less true that more often we grind our teeth and feel impatient at all the secret harshness of our fate. But we can do as we please: fools and appearances will speak up against us, claiming “those are people without duties” – fools and appearances are always against us

Day 2641, new project.

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I started a new project again. This time on a boat that different boatbuilders had worked on but abandoned. There is little information to work with, but I began working last Friday after two weeks of preparation. There are many steps ahead, and I will keep you updated. If by any chance you know someone who is good with wood and wouldn’t mind living and working in the north of Norway, please let me know; I need help.   

Day 2640, necessary.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, all too human
Of first and last things

31 The illogical necessary. – Among the things that can reduce a thinker to despair is the knowledge that the illogical is a necessity for mankind, and that much good proceeds from the illogical. It is implanted so firmly in the passions, in language, in art, in religion, and in general in everything that lends value to life, that one cannot pull it out of these fair things without mortally injuring them. Only very naive people are capable of believing that the nature of man could be transformed into a purely logical one; but if there should be degrees of approximation to this objective, what would not have to be lost if this course were taken! Even the most rational man from time to time needs to recover nature, that is to say his illogical original relationship with all things.

Day 2639, expectations.

Daily picture, Poetry 
I moved to another space, job, and time again with expectations on my side. 
Even though I didn’t spell them out, I knew what they were.
But this ambiguity makes it difficult to feel my state of mind for now, I am here. 
It’s my age or time, getting closer to an end than a beginning. 
Expectation slowly shows its empty face after it already lost its words.