Enjoying the view from Limbo
I once had more readers in any given week than Nietzsche and Kierkegaard had in their entire lives, combined. I lost all those readers by choice, or rather I should say by lack of any agreeable alternative. The thought of “keeping them” was revolting, given what I would have had to do to myself to achieve that end. I now write — as...
“I have lost more friends over the past six years than I even knew I had.” False. For you cannot lose a friend. You can only lose illusions. To “lose a friend” is merely to realize that there was no friend. That is a pure gain; an evolution from ignorance to knowledge. Better no true friends than a hundred illusions. “What in the...
He whose instinct is to wince when you hurt yourself, to warn you when he sees danger ahead, to shed a tear for your heartbreak, to remind you (whether gently or brusquely) of your reason when you become confused, and to offer a hand when you are frightened to face this moment alone, is…
“My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication–it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness–it is all that I have–and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.”
— Franz Kafka, diary entry
Everything in our experience can be divided in two. After all, that most basic division explains why we have our world of experience in the first place: the primordial world-egg was split in half, or God created heaven and earth, or the Yin and Yang were distinguished — as you please. And this is why we rational animals are so naturally apt to...
Nobody hears what you are saying. Nobody sees what you are seeing. Nobody senses what you are feeling, or would understand why you feel that way if they did sense it. Has there ever been a lonelier time than today? Indeed, how many of us fully realized before today that a time can be lonely? I am not talking about subjective time, of...
I have friends I have never met face to face whom I would trust with all my money. Meanwhile, very few of the “friends” I have made through the normal social accidents of my life have ever been more than useful or pleasant acquaintances in the end — “nice,” agreeable enough, but lacking the essential kinship of soul that is the essence of...
Who would harm me envies me. Who would harm the world envies all. The former honors me with his flattering hatred. The latter is a groveling worm beneath my foot, a tyrant in spirit…
Throughout my teaching life, spanning twenty-five years, I have frequently had the honor of serving as private counselor or mentor to students struggling with personal problems — usually problems of an existential, as opposed to practical, nature. I seem to have a knack for attracting young people who are a little outside modernity’s social norms, whether temperamentally, intellectually, or both. One reason for...
Follow: