Comments on: Put Down The Pen http://rickdancer.com/put-down-the-pen/ Rick Dancer Media Services Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:16:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Ben Woolley http://rickdancer.com/put-down-the-pen/#comment-881 Ben Woolley Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:17:14 +0000 http://blog.rickdancer.com/?p=888#comment-881 This reminds me of a passage I found again via google books. <blockquote> Two Happy Ones: Truly, despite his youth, this person knows how to <em>improvise life</em> and amazes even the keenest observer — for he never seems to make a mistake even though he constantly plays the riskiest game. It reminds one of those masters of musical improvisation to whose hands the listener would also like to ascribe a divine <em>infallibility</em> even though, like every mortal, they make a mistake here and there. But they are practiced and inventive and always ready at any moment to incorporate into the thematic order the most accidental note to which the stroke of a finger or mood drives them, breathing a beautiful meaning and soul into an accident. Here is an entirely different person: basically everything he wills and plans goes wrong. What occasionally he set his heart on several times brought him to the edge of the abyss and within a hair of destruction; and if he did escape that, it was certainly not just "with a black eye." Do you believe he is unhappy about this? He decided long ago not to take his own wishes and plans so seriously. "If I don't succeed at this," he says to himself, "I might succeed at that; and on the whole I don't know whether I should be more grateful towards my failures than towards any success. Was I made to be stubborn and to have a bull's horns? That which constitutes the value and outcome of life <em>for me</em> lies elsewhere; my pride as well as my misery lie elsewhere. I know more about life because I have so often been on the verge of losing it; and precisely therefore do I <em>get</em> more out of life than any of you!" <cite>Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 303</cite> </blockquote> Firstly, it seems that he has discovered the emo kid in the second happy one. Secondly, it seems that what you are writing about is the first happy one. Personally, I put it this way: the first happy one sees the effects of his actions, judging his actions by what they produce, not by whether they satisfy a particular goal. He has so tuned his instincts to his surroundings that he is naturally prepared to derive not just any meaning, but even the meaning that is right in front of him. He lets his own view of what happens provide an aesthetic awareness that allows him to incorporate the effects of an accident into a newly-reformulated medium on which to perform his next action. If you are looking for a new purpose, is that not what you have to do? To let purpose be a new opportunity? To see <em>all</em> purpose? Wouldn't God let you <em>choose</em> among any of the purposes He provides? Letting God in your life could effectively be letting purpose into your life. This reminds me of a passage I found again via google books.

Two Happy Ones:

Truly, despite his youth, this person knows how to improvise life and amazes even the keenest observer — for he never seems to make a mistake even though he constantly plays the riskiest game. It reminds one of those masters of musical improvisation to whose hands the listener would also like to ascribe a divine infallibility even though, like every mortal, they make a mistake here and there. But they are practiced and inventive and always ready at any moment to incorporate into the thematic order the most accidental note to which the stroke of a finger or mood drives them, breathing a beautiful meaning and soul into an accident.

Here is an entirely different person: basically everything he wills and plans goes wrong. What occasionally he set his heart on several times brought him to the edge of the abyss and within a hair of destruction; and if he did escape that, it was certainly not just “with a black eye.” Do you believe he is unhappy about this? He decided long ago not to take his own wishes and plans so seriously. “If I don’t succeed at this,” he says to himself, “I might succeed at that; and on the whole I don’t know whether I should be more grateful towards my failures than towards any success. Was I made to be stubborn and to have a bull’s horns? That which constitutes the value and outcome of life for me lies elsewhere; my pride as well as my misery lie elsewhere. I know more about life because I have so often been on the verge of losing it; and precisely therefore do I get more out of life than any of you!”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 303

Firstly, it seems that he has discovered the emo kid in the second happy one. Secondly, it seems that what you are writing about is the first happy one.

Personally, I put it this way: the first happy one sees the effects of his actions, judging his actions by what they produce, not by whether they satisfy a particular goal. He has so tuned his instincts to his surroundings that he is naturally prepared to derive not just any meaning, but even the meaning that is right in front of him. He lets his own view of what happens provide an aesthetic awareness that allows him to incorporate the effects of an accident into a newly-reformulated medium on which to perform his next action.

If you are looking for a new purpose, is that not what you have to do? To let purpose be a new opportunity? To see all purpose? Wouldn’t God let you choose among any of the purposes He provides? Letting God in your life could effectively be letting purpose into your life.

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