I’ve been reading a lot lately. It started to feel like I was reading the same book written by different authors. It could be the genre selection.
But a much more interesting thought popped up after. Is life not the same?
It quite is! Each individual experience is the same story from a different perspective. The universe is woven from a single thread, but the thread is not yet unraveled. Dostoevsky’s Man from the Underground is absolutely pissed off about this and wants everyone to feel just as miserable as he does. Dostoevsky’s Idiot is happy because of this and everyone else is pissed off because he’s not miserable as they are. Nietzche tries to build a world where a Man sees and understands life from above and tries to make it better for others – the Ubermensch is the road and not the destination. The road to a better humanity from the perspective of the present. Aurelius came to this same conclusion 2000 years ago in fewer and more concise words: if you have the capacity to think better than the average human, it is your worldly duty to think and act in ways that make life better for others. That is your part. If you give the world your best, you can live with a clear conscience and be at peace with yourself. Be it a kind word or a martyrdom, both have the same value.
Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.
Søren Kierkegaard
The thought has an actual practical application. You can’t extract peace out of yourself by torture. And that’s what the books and us humans have in common. We spend so much time thinking about making the right decision instead of thinking about how to make our decisions right. You will never know if you picked it right. If the choices you made are the best ones. There’s no possible way to see the alternative; just as it is possible that you chose wrong it is possible you chose right. Every single step and every single breath you’ve taken has brought you to this point and made you the person you are. When you want more, you have to understand you’ll never have all. Might as well accept this and give your best to the world to make use of as it sees fit. We exist for a purpose we did not choose.
Yet we exist. And our books come in infinite words and infinite colors.
Give your book a read.