Thoughts on Nietzsche

In “Also sprach Zarathustra” Nietzsche mentions three metamorphoses of the human mind. First you become a camel, carrying the weight of the world in suffering acceptance . At one desperate point you become an angry lion, roaring against the bullshit that is going on. Then you become a child.

What makes one of the greatest thinkers of all times name the highest state of being the one of a child? I will draw a line towards my own thoughts here. What does it mean to be a child? Not related to Nietzsche’s definition of a child, but to my own. (I do not want to put my words into his mouth, therefore I repeat that the next words are my own, inspired by him but probably not 100% Nietzsche, the poor fellow lived a long time ago, born to early in a time no one understood his genius. Other times, other words, other language. Most important, I am not him.)

What defines a child? A child is a very pure being of conciousness. Kids mainly communicate with emotion, not with words. Thinking of my two-years old aupair girl Gracie, I can say that those beings are purely sensitive, kind, yet impulsive but very deep and able to connect with you in a magical way. They remind me of very high people, gazing at the most simple things, fullfilled by the beauty of nature and all the magic that surrounds us. Smiling, loughing, crying. All at once and without any logic. Pure emotion. No doubts, no fears, no understanding of right and wrong. But a clear understanding of what they like and want. They are egoistic and yet they like to share their most beloved things. And they forget fucking fast. Never pissed for more than 10 minutes because they suffer from being pissed when they can not play with you due to their own mood. Those lucky souls have no understanding of the word “proud” yet. And they can lough about themselves.

So in my point of view, Nietzsche refers to that state of conciousness. The state of loving yourself and everyone around you without thinking of any reason why not. You never got hurt so far. You love because that is the most fullfilling thing, somehow everyone else loves you as well because of your adorable cuteness, but thats another aspect. You are amazed by the beauty of existence and of all existing beings. I critizise the growing up line we are following. We do not really grow up. We just loose our fantasy. We loose the ability to get caught by a slight emotion. Some of us even fear emotion. We no longer gaze at stars or trees and we never wonder how. We google. But what we keep from our childhood stage is some ridicously childish behaviour such as false pride, gleefullness or jealousy. We do not grow up, we just forget about the good stuff we once knew.

I do not say that we should run to our moms and get back into that cozy state of being an infant, no. I want to remind me and you that we don’t have to loose that state whilst growing up. We can work or study, function in the system we created, live our adult life and yet we can also be amazed by the world. Imagine you have the most horrible day ever, your boss pissed you off, before that your fuckin cunt of a roomate ate your LAST piece of bread, what you realized in the morning, after you overslept, after you did not find your keyes/mobile/glasses. And then they did control you in the tram. You had no ticket. Imagine now, that just a beautiful sky, or one smile of a person can change your whole day. Imagine a slight emotion can catch you and carry away all the bullshit you went trough. Imagine you do not take your bosses mood personal,you do not hate you roommate because you bought the best bagel ever in the shop next to your station, you do not care any more because you are focused on other things that are more interesting to you, that happen right now around you. Call me ignorant, but the one who is flattered by the flowers while someone yells at him is the one who dances through life with the mystic smile of enjoying every single second.

I think that might be the art of living Nietzsche talked about. When he said the highest state of being is the child he might have thought of the magical world our mind created due to a lack of knowledge. How great is a mind that combines magic, science, believe and knowledge? That is what my head understands while reading the first speech of Zarathustra “von den drei Verwandlungen”.

Being in the first semester of my philosophy class I am open minded and thankfull for all critics and thoughts on my writing. It is four in the morning so I am horribly sorry if some spelling errors sneaked their way into that jungle of words. May the Spaghetti Monster forgive me. Good night.