Reminders

Occasionally we happen upon something in ourselves that seems to throw a clear shaft of light down into our soul. A clarity of sight, or of purpose. A landmark in the wilderness.

Therein lies another reason for this blog. It is to chronicle the path I am taking. If I lose myself somewhere in the future, I would like a map to refer back to. Something to show me - look! You knew this once. You understood. And you will know it again.

I was reminded of this when I returned to something I wrote on another journey last year. I could do with some of that insight now.

Nietzsche is fascinating because his philosophy was so very personal, and when you have an insight into the person, the thinking becomes so much more logical. We saw his loss of faith, his pains, his search for the truth. We can trace how he turned from Christianity, and once we start to understand his physical suffering the existentialist focus on this aspect of the human condition makes perfect sense. He developed this to cope, when he was lying ill.

I went into that room with him, into the no-place of Sartre’s hell.
Where sunlight plays painfully on the ceiling and every eye-blink hurts. Life seems a mockery in that room. And I left with him when he came out to walk on the dew-soft grass and breathe the hard clarity of mountain light. I marvelled at being there in that classroom then, and I tried to promise myself that whatever is to come I will never be afraid or sad while I am still free to walk out into this world. I am not in that room, and that is enough to be thankful for.

There is a sense that he went to the mountains, to the clear open
spaces, to put the trivialities of most of human life into perspective. I
remember a boat trip I took, out on the river. We fought currents and wrenched ropes, and found an inner calm somewhere in the turmoil of nature, a clear still lake in ourselves. When I stepped back onto land I felt so incredibly free. What did my petty worries matter when the wind still swept the rushes and the rains still fell.

Amen.