We are born, we live, we die and in the end it all amounts to- nothing. However, as with most things, it is the journey that matters (not all things for if one is going on holiday then the hours of flights and delays is nothing compared to the actual holiday!)
Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg was your average young fellow but when his betrothed died he went into the darkness (trying to contact her via the occult) and emerged out the other end as the poet Novalis.
Novalis wrote a book called Henry Von Ofterdingen. In the book Henry has a dream and in his dream he sees the face of the most beautiful girl in the centre of a blue flower. He knows that this dream is not his alone and many people, maybe everyone, has had the same dream but Henry decides that the best use of his time is to go and find this girl, so out he sets. However, before he finds her Novalis died so I’d like to think that Henry is still out there searching for his dream.
Whilst many people set out with noble intentions, many quickly fall by the wayside into the rut of existence. In the brilliant introduction to philosophy, Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder creates his own creation myth- a magician pulls a rabbit (the world) out of a hat and people are born on the fur of the rabbit and whilst most crawl down the fur to nestle safely and warmly against the body of the rabbit others try to climb up to the top of the fur to look the magician in the eye and call out to those below ‘Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space!’
These folks are the great philosophers and inventors, the people who shape the world. Usually full of self-confidence and stubbornness, George Bernard Shaw once observed ‘the reasonable man adapts himself to the world while the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.’ This is how the world changes from the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, dragged kicking and screaming by those whom people despise and then take for granted.
For many, life contains one element- sustenance- to eat so as to exist, to reproduce so as to exist (ever wondered why the obsession with cookery and sexual intercourse?) however it is the stubborn ones who do not subscribe to this model who change the world, those who try to create new worlds, sometimes for personal gain but usually just for the hell of it, the great thrill, the why not? factor (usually resulting in poverty, disgrace, resentment or obscurity). Without such dreamers- many scientific discoveries came about with no practical use but great use was found for them later- the world would become stagnant and die however we take these people’s sweat and tears for granted when really we should be reading their biographies, studying their notes and as Nietzsche said ‘the average man sees something spectacular and goes ‘I’m scared, freak!’ whereas the exceptional man goes ‘wow! Why haven’t I done that a thousand times before?’
The ‘normal’ person lives the life of compromise, more than is necessary just to survive in the civilised world, with relationships, occupations, ambitions and dreams nothing above the ordinary but as Hunter S Thompson said in a lecture at Boulder University ‘what’s wrong with spending your life chasing rainbows?’ but don’t procrastinate for as another rather rebellious figure, Jesus, once said ‘I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work’
‘till next time!
thegreaterfool2016 