If you ever sit very quiet with yourself – lying in bed in those hushed moments of night with the sheer-black fabric of darkness veiling your eyes or you are peering out over a green and brown expanse of rolling hill and forest from the top of a sun-bleached mountain top –
This is not going to be my usual article. I am not going to tell you how you can defeat some demon or accomplish some goal.
Throughout our lives we are asked to take on many roles. Parents. Siblings. Employees. Spouses. Friends. Lovers. All of these roles come with certain expectations of action and responsibilities of being, and most of us adopt these expectations and responsibilities without giving much thought about what it actually means for our identities, our personal freedom, our responsibility, and our self-expression.
We are moving into the season of change – of renewing our commitment to transformation and of reasserting our dedication to a better life.
In his book Twilight of the Idols or How To Philosophize With A Hammer, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche says; “From life’s school of war: What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” Nearly all of us have run across some version of this pithy aphorism before.
Ah, existential questions. Those rising, dreadful things that strike at you in the dark moments of tragedy or introspection and strip away the fleeting illusions of life revealing the truth of absurdity.
It is no small secret that I take issue with perpetually positive people. It’s not that I have issues with positivity in general.
I hold a largely unpopular belief. I believe every person that exists is, by rights, a philosopher. I also believe that the most interesting and important thing about any person is their unique philosophy.
In the lightening moments of morning, just as the sun is inching above the horizon and splashing the brilliant purple and red brushstroke colors of dawn in the sky, I run past a graveyard.
Oh, the river of useless platitudes that have flown out of the mouths of well-intentioned people, to which I must occasionally include myself.
