The Power of a Will
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I love quoting Nietzsche.
He was such a brilliant philosopher and not nearly as brutal in life as you would expect from his quotable bon mots. Did you know that he was such a rigid creature of habit that when he forgot his lunch one day, his housekeeper was able to run ahead and catch him with it on his route from home to the university where he worked? She knew just where he’d be and when and what it would take to catch him. I find it fascinating to know that about someone that advocated the abolition of rules and convention for the “superior man”, Das Ubermensch.
When people tell me how strong I must be to have survived cancer so well and easily, I try not to laugh out loud. Death is easy, but life is hard.
They look at me and ask how it was I could have just gone on and on the way I did. They wonder how it is I can shrug about the treatment now as I try to explain to them that it never entered my mind to do anything but take it and go on. I mean, what other choice was there, really? To be honest, I’m a little ashamed that I made as much fuss about the whole thing as I did. I must have debated about calling the nurse, the first time I was sick to my stomach, for a full five minutes before pulling the emergency call lever in the bathroom. I only did it then because I was afraid I’d fall and crack my head on the sink. But, in a way, that was all fairly easy.
You see, as long as I had something to focus on, something to resist, to fight, I was okay. I had an enemy, lymphoma. It’s easy to fight against something like that, but now… Now that I’m having to sort out medical bills and clinic visits and hair growing back, well, now, it’s hard. I’m supposed to have learned something from this experience. People expect that I have gained some wisdom, some insight into the human condition, as a result of my near brush with death. But, I don’t have any. Not a one. I haven’t learned a thing about life and death and everything in between that I didn’t know already. I promise you.
Well, perhaps I have learned one thing: if I die before my creditors can collect, they’re just screwed and I don’t care.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"If you want others to be happy, practise compassion.
If you want to be happy, practise compassion."
--The Dalai Lama
It seems the more we experience, the less we control our will, rationally.
‘The more you know the less you think’ kind of thing.
As infants we know no boundaries, yet we have an innate sense of reality, one that absorbs without question and is filtered only by need.
As adults the ability to focus leaves us wanting when the goal is complete. Thus creating voids, which are blessed events, giving us an opportunity to choose a new path.
Comment by Jeff — 12/15/2007 @ 12:20 am