#joyful wisdom

[novelties-and-notions]

FLOSTRE [sadly watching Kant leave the stage]: Poor chap. I hope he'll get over it.

SOCRATES (the ventriloquist's dummy sitting on Flostre's knee): Never mind him. What about these dancing girls you keep promising us?

[Enter Friedrich Nietzsche, more wild-eyed than ever.]

FLOSTRE: Mon Dieu! Le voilà qui revient!

NIETZSCHE: The dancing girls are dead.

SOCRATES: What?

NIETZSCHE: The dancing girls remain dead.

FLOSTRE: What?

NIETZSCHE: And we have killed them. How shall we comfort ourselves?

SOCRATES and FLOSTRE: WHAT?

NIETZSCHE [patiently]: It's a metaphor. I don't mean we've actually murdered all the dancing girls.

FLOSTRE: Bon sang! I should hope not. This isn't that kind of show. We leave that to the opera.

NIETZSCHE: I'm simply saying that all our philosophy has made the idea of a troupe of dancing girls no longer necessary.

SOCRATES: That's what you say!

NIETZSCHE: The dancing girls no longer have a hold on the imagination.

SOCRATES: Speak for yourself!

NIETZSCHE: But that's an old idea. The point is really…

FLOSTRE: Quoi?

NIETZSCHE [dramatically]: Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?

SOCRATES: That depends.

FLOSTRE: On what?

SOCRATES: On whether or not this guy is totally bonkers. I know what I think.

NIETZSCHE [ignoring him]: Must we ourselves not become dancing girls simply to appear worthy of this great deed?

[Nietzsche tears open his shirt to reveal a tight spandex vest with a large letter Ü emblazened on the front. He dashes off-stage and almost immediately re-emerges wearing his underpants over his trousers and a pair of high-heeled sandals.]

NIETZSCHE: Behold! The über-dancing girl!

[As he starts to kick his leg up in the air, two burly men in white coats stride onstage, pick him up by the elbows and carry him off.]

SOCRATES: Is it my imagination, or is this place full of fruitcakes?

[proverbwolf]

So overall, though my life is far from perfect, I'm contented with it. And in a peculiar way, I'm grateful for the troubling emotions I experienced. The obstacles we face in life can provide powerful incentives for change.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

[inkneverdies]

The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle light in the darkness of mere being

Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

[potawewe]

When you are face to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery.

William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, Baltimore Lectures

[potawewe]

When compassion develops we see that all life is the same, and that every single being wishes to be happy.

Kalu Rinpoche, The Dharma That Illuminates All Beings Impartially Like the Light of the Sun and the Moon.

[geopolicraticus]

[vodkaandcherrycola]

“For the New Year. I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself today, and what thought first crossed my mind this year, a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful: I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. Amor fati: let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. Looking aside, let that be my sole negation!”

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Book Fourth: The Joyful Wisdom