Thought Experiment...
Posted on: November 7, 2008 - 6:26pm
psychboi
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Joined: 2008-06-30
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Thought Experiment...
Inspired from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche
Nietzsche's thought experiment calls us to consider how we're really living in this life - your only life.
In what ways have you not lived well? What regrets do you have about your life thus far?
It's not possible for us to have positive change in our lives if we believe that our unhappiness, our discontent, our lonliness, our anger, or whatever it is that we attribute as our reasons for not living well, is something outside our locus of control. As long as the responsibility is in the hands of another (people, jobs, school, relationships, family, church, God) then your lot in life is going to be at an impasse.
We need to ask ourselves this question: What can I do right now in my life so that one year or five years from now, I won't look back and see that I've collected new regrets along the way?
For some, it means we have to take responsibilty for our life. In the words of Otto Rank, the degree of which we are unaware of how our drives, instincts, unconscious, and environment are influencing us, they control us. It's time for some of us to become self-aware. It can be scary as hell to deeply know who we are and the realities of our existence - because who knows what you will find and if we'll like what we find! It's more rewarding, though.
For some, it means we have to take a risk in our relationships with others. It's time to live authentically, for living ungenuinly has left us lonely and blocked our ability for intimacy with others. Tying in with the previous thought, only through knowing ourselves can we authentically be in relationships with others. Yet, ironically,the only way we can come to know ourselves is through relationships with others. It's time to let go of our fears of rejection, of being hurt, of being vulnerable. All interpersonal interactions with others - the good, the bad, the ugly - work as mirros: they show us who we are.
If you're into praying or meditation, I encourage you to concentrate (or pray) on this request: "Starting today, let me live a life I would cherish repeating for eternity."
What if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest lonliness and say to you:
"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequences - even this spider in this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment, and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?
Or...
Have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have i heard anything more devine"
If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or crush you
"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequences - even this spider in this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment, and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?
Or...
Have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have i heard anything more devine"
If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or crush you
Nietzsche's thought experiment calls us to consider how we're really living in this life - your only life.
In what ways have you not lived well? What regrets do you have about your life thus far?
It's not possible for us to have positive change in our lives if we believe that our unhappiness, our discontent, our lonliness, our anger, or whatever it is that we attribute as our reasons for not living well, is something outside our locus of control. As long as the responsibility is in the hands of another (people, jobs, school, relationships, family, church, God) then your lot in life is going to be at an impasse.
We need to ask ourselves this question: What can I do right now in my life so that one year or five years from now, I won't look back and see that I've collected new regrets along the way?
For some, it means we have to take responsibilty for our life. In the words of Otto Rank, the degree of which we are unaware of how our drives, instincts, unconscious, and environment are influencing us, they control us. It's time for some of us to become self-aware. It can be scary as hell to deeply know who we are and the realities of our existence - because who knows what you will find and if we'll like what we find! It's more rewarding, though.
For some, it means we have to take a risk in our relationships with others. It's time to live authentically, for living ungenuinly has left us lonely and blocked our ability for intimacy with others. Tying in with the previous thought, only through knowing ourselves can we authentically be in relationships with others. Yet, ironically,the only way we can come to know ourselves is through relationships with others. It's time to let go of our fears of rejection, of being hurt, of being vulnerable. All interpersonal interactions with others - the good, the bad, the ugly - work as mirros: they show us who we are.
If you're into praying or meditation, I encourage you to concentrate (or pray) on this request: "Starting today, let me live a life I would cherish repeating for eternity."
How different life might be if we entertained the idea that that which is wrong in our lives, we are responsible for. It doesn't mean it's our fault (necessarily), but it does mean that we are left to manage it.