A personal touch

Back in the US after a busy and, nonetheless, eventful summer. I went back to my home country, and for some reason (which, of course, I am aware of) I felt more distant and alienated from its people, its culture, its noise, its buzz, it spirituality and its superficiality than ever before. I barely survived!
Also went to Europe, and lived in Germany for two months. I have never felt more at home than in Europe. It's in my blood this place- this continent's stoned streets, its corners and alleys, its people - both dead and alive, its architecture, its pretentious philosophy, its lofty finesse, its style and music. Even its 'common' people are acceptable to me! - This is the kind of freedom I experienced - for the first time in my life!
Now I am back into a retrogression, with an emptiness in my heart, which testifies to a certain lack of direction that I am currently feeling. I need a new project, a new alibi, an excuse, a new constellation, new planets around me, a rebirth, a new philosophy, a new love to pour into - i am single again! - and hopefully this time the container does not spill over!

Illusions of the few

Few people (the rare ones, the solitaries, the geniuses) walk on earth as if they are hunchbacks, who are burdened by the urgency of a million decisions. In their weak moments they seek kindred souls to share their strange and unique story with them, but to their despair they find none. In their strong moments they see how they outlive every one-sided and oppositional limitation, into which they have learnt to place the predictable paths of other mortals. There is a great unparalleled joy they experience in this later discovery, which is bolstered by the fact that they cannot share this joy with anyone! They also see how impossible it is for them die, to limit themselves, to define themselves, to know themselves! -- the true meaning of the 'passion for the infinite' -- even though in their weaker moments they wish they could die, in order to lose the hunchback's eye and ear which survey and listen to the music and the chaos of the entirety of being. Since, to know oneself is to corner oneself into a particular taste and manner of existence -- and does this require, first and foremost, a very strange and deliberate (?) passion for stupidity that stubbornly decides to turn away from the expansive growth and unity of being, in order to set up its own 'self' (a 'self', therefore, in opposition to the world)?... or is this conjecture itself an illusion, a self-projection? However, during their more speculative moments the few think that the majority of these self-limiters are themselves illusory beings, smoke-screens set-up on the stage of the world to make the latter more interesting and unpredictable; and that in truth these self-limiters know that they are putting on a show for the solitaries, secretly laughing at their crests and troughs, their laughter and tears. In any case, the 'few' do not really comprehend the self-limiters and self-knowers. The latters' mystery is a source of comedy, curiosity, tragedy, nay, life itself for the few. This mystery represents the illusory point of forbidden knowledge, of death.

Shame as pride

Many people (teenagers, women in love, economical men) convert the deep shame they have before themselves into their pride. This is the reason why they want to hide their pride at any price. Occassionally they find themselves obligated to give up the object of their pride (love, life or the world itself), especially when they fear that the source of this object would be revealed to be this very shame/pride. They renounce the object only so that they may go on staying afloat on the surface, go on being proud. Many call this their sacrifice and suffering.

What is greatness?

A great person has within him the experiences of the entire history of humanity. And something more. His 'growth' into an adult symbolizes the assimilation of these experiences, most unconsciously, into his being. The curious on-looker only has to study his various gestures - his thoughts, his body language, his anxiety, his pain, his hand-movements and his joy, since these different things interpret and display this history in a new light - the light through which his particular genius shines through. This rare particularity and specificity is nothing but what one thoughtlessly calls 'individuality'.
Achieving individuality is a rare thing, and is certainly not an easy task. It is not all pleasure and happiness. The great individual has to live and die many times, since only in doing so can he rehearse the history of humanity inside and outside of him. He has to survive multiple bruises, go on lonely cruises, and learn not to expect other people to comprehend him. He has to accept disappointment as a part of greatness. This is tough to do, since being human (read 'naive') he instinctively expects more than 100% from others all the time, since this is what he gives to them in all his engagements. But he has to see that human beings are not created equal, and the creator-god has squinted eyes. He has to learn to see that his contemporaries do not understand him since they are dependent on him to show them the way. (Achtung: "The tendency to let oneself be debased, robbed, lied to, and exploited could be the shame of a god among men"). It is as if even his common contemporaries 'recognize' who he is and what his destiny is! The present gets its meaning only through a creative reinterpretation of the past - this is the greatest lesson he learns from his friends, family and other strangers.
Individuality and greatness is achieved only when the person not only learns life's tragic lessons, but has that extra energy in him to appear at the other end of the tunnel with an unbruised limb and multiple wings. Even though a part of his being is as old as the mountains, there is another part of his being that is beautifully preserved and fresh, breathing the life of the present and the future. Like the meeting point of autumn and spring he comes to the scene to create his art, and also the appreciators of his art!
But this is not easy. The world, his contemporaries, will resist him as they come to disbelieve their own instincts about life. And this is the greatest challenge for greatness. For now, it has to learn not only how to create, but also to preserve itself in the face of the toughest resistance. This is when greatness stares at abysmal madness, and it needs this madness to do this double job of creating and preserving. Few survive this test for a long time, and in failing this test they become part of history, however only to point themselves towards a future greatness, towards the individuals to come...

Great passage

"Independence is an issue that concerns very few people:- it is a prerogative of the strong. And even when somebody has every right to be independent, if he attempts such a thing without having to do so, he proves that he is probably not only strong, but brave to the point of madness. He enters a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers already inherent in the very act of living, not the least of which is the fact that no one with eyes will see how and where he gets lost and lonely and is torn limb from limb by some cave-Minotaur of conscience. And assuming a man like this is destroyed, it is an event so far from human comprehension that people do not feel it or feel for him:- and he cannot go back again! He cannot go back to their pity again! - -"

- NIETZSCHE