There’s a quote by nietzsche that I used to have on a magnet on my fridge.  It read thus:

One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star.

It always struck me as a very poetic was to say that it’s ok to be a little nuts….:)

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think that’s EXACTLY what he meant.  Let’s face it, there are VERY few of us who learn life’s lessons without falling flat on our faces at least a thousand times.

Our society says that we should be perfect all the time.  Our tits should be perky, our wieners always hard, our teeth as white as can be, etc, etc,…you get the point.  We can’t DARE to be a little off center; to be such would be to be a failure at the game of life.

On the contrary, it’s the folks that have really stumbled, fell, scraped their knees, etc who really create.  The creators in life mold themselves out of a chaotic lump of human decisions and experiences.  The most beautiful masterpieces are those pieced together and made out of the most discordant remnants.  Anyone can make something nice out of a perfect piece of marble.  Not everyone can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

And that’s the point:  those who TRULY succeed in life are those who CREATE themselves.  We are those people who create something beautiful, something that dances, out of chaos:  we turn water into wine.  This can only happen when we harness those discordant powers and force them, every so effortlessly, into something that begins to take the shape of la vita bella.

Nietzsche may have been crazy, but he knew what he was talking about.  It’s funny that the metaphor he used was a stellar one.  Besides the notion of harnessing chaos, he pointed us in another direction: upward.  So often we think of the heavens as the abode of god.  We reserve those heavenly metaphors for something wholy and completely unhuman.  N. turned that practice on it’s head.  Humans create THEMSELVES into dancing stars; we create and mold ourselves into heavenly objects.

That’s crazy, right?  Hell, we can’t be heavenly, right?  Shit, blood, piss, boogers, toejam, bones….those are base, inane, everyday things.  How can they be heavenly, stellar even?

That’s the beauty of it all:  those things are all we have.  It’s only out of those base elements that we can create anything of meaning.  The only things that really mean anything are those things that come and go and then are gone forever.  Meaning, Nietzsche would say, is in the appearance of things, in the very literal sense.  This thing APPEARS and then is gone.  It’s on the stage of life for a blink and then it fades away.  Precisely that act of coming and going gives things their real character.  heavenly and unchangable is boring as hell.  Give me a dancing star that’s formed from chaos, that burns brightly, and then fades away, and I’ll give you a beautiful human life.

Burn on my friends.  Dance this dance of life and reach up to the heavens:  there you will find your real self.

Brett

I’ve been reading a bunch of Nietzsche lately.  If you’ve never read any of his works, he can be a bit obtuse.  It’s not that you have to be really smart to understand him; you have to have a certain ‘vision and ears’ to see and hear the way he does.

I’ve read every single published english language version of  his works, and most several times.  I was reading thus spoke zarathustra again the other evening, and this passage, which has struck me like a heavy mallet before, resonated:

They meet a sick man, or an old man, or a corpse [Editor’s note: the three sights that, according to Buddhist tradition, first set the young Buddha on the path to renunciation] — and immediately they say: “Life is refuted!”

But only they are refuted, and their eyes, which see only one side of existence.

Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little casualties that bring death: thus do they wait, and clench their teeth.

Or else, they grasp at sweetmeats while mocking their childishness: they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their clinging.

Their wisdom speaks thus: “He who remains alive is a fool; but we are all such fools! And that is the most foolish thing in life!”

“Life is only suffering”: say others, and do not lie. Then see to it that you cease! See to it that the life which is only suffering ceases!

Now, reread that passage THREE times before you go on…

How many religions fit this mold.  The buddhists, christians, muslims, etc, etc, etc….  they each teach us to downplay the flesh and to seek for something ‘real’, by which they mean something you can’t touch, see, smell, hear or taste.  invariably, it’s something THEY hold the secret to and THEY can tell you all about.  Flesh is bad, and spirit is good for them.  In short…

“LIFE AS IT IS IS DIFFICULT AND THAT DIFFICULTY POINTS TO THE FACT THAT LIFE SUCKS!!!”

BULLSHIT!  Life is not bad, it’s not ALL suffering, it’s not something you tame.  Life is ALL we have.  Rather than accepting and embracing life as it is and LIVING it, so many pretend it’s a dress rehearsal for something better.

“Well”, you might say, “what’s wrong with that?”  Well, nothing, if you want to miss out on the only 80 years you have on this planet.  Nothing, if you want to devalue all that makes this life good.  Nothing, if you can’t get past your childish crying and moaning because you can’t live every day in plush surrounding and with no pain at all.

Pain, suffering, heartache, etc are what makes life worth living. Imagine a boring, perfect, and painless existance.  What a bore!  Those who are strong LOVE the pain, not in sado-masochistic abandon, but in the same way a good student loves a difficult book to read:  the harder the text, the more fulfilling the treasure that’s gained.

So, in short, GROW UP!  Suck it up and LOVE your life.  Live it like you had to live it AGAIN, and AGAIN, and AGAIN.  Only then can you truly live your life from a center of strength, power and will.  Accepting and LOVING our lives creates a strong center.  When we cry and bitch and moan, we lean to one side or another and we fail to be rooted in ourselves.

Root yourself in yourself.

Brett

You know, there are times when life appears to be going too fast.  We wake up early, only to feel as though we’re already late.  We work harder, only to feel behind.  We try harder, only to feel that we’re failing.

I’m not sure it’s a common feeling among all socio-economic, regional, etc lines, but in America, it’s all too common.  We see the unemployment rate rising and we start to look in the mirror:  am I next?  Will it be me standing in the enemployment line, waiting for my handout?

At base, we’re a people who pride ourselves on making a go of it and succeeding.  We aren’t programmed for failure.  That’s part of the problem; failure is a part of life.  For many, failure is a part of EVERYDAY life.  They live a daily existence where the other shoes is constantly dropping, and it’s dropping into the same old hole.  Again and again.  It’s certainly not fair and there’s really no easy explanation.

For those of us who are used to succeeding, the answer is easy:  try harder and you’ll succeed.  For those who are used to failing, the answer is much more grim:  no matter how hard you try, you’ll NEVER succeed…..so why try?

Who is right?  I believe it’s a little of both.  It’s really about momentum.  Those who have ALWAYS succeeded have a tendency (in the physical sense) to keep so doing.  It’s like a ball that is rolling down the side of a hill.  It’s constantly moving.  Sure, it will come to rest at some point, but up til then it’s been in constant movement.  On the flip side, those who have always failed also have a tendency.  That tendency is to think about life, and each situation therein, as one expected failure after another.

In the end, how we think about ourselves and our lives is a major deciding factor of how things turn out.  It’s not 100% so, nor event 50%.  There’s no formula for success.  What IS true is that our mindset and how we think about life IN A CONSISTENT WAY, colors the way we approach situations and hence unconsciously guides our actions.  Taking on obstacles as one more stop along the way to success directs our actions in ways that TEND to be more conducive to overcoming those obstacles.  The opposite is also true:  the more we EXPECT failure, the more we TEND to in fact fail.

Is life difficult?  It certainly seems so. As a matter of fact, it’s SO difficult at times, that to force ourselves into failure by our controllable reactions is LUNACY.  However, in reality, Life is really NOT any one thing.  Life is as it is.  Life can be beautiful, difficult, fulfilling, crushing, and the list goes on.  So much of how we experience life is a matter of embracing it and loving it as it is.

Could it be that the old adage is correct?

‘It’s not whether you fail, but what you do with the failure that counts.’

take care,

Brett