Embracing life, must we step back from life to do so?

[Zenmervolt]

"One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too."

Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf" closes with those lines. 246 pages twisting and turning, circling back and forth through the mind of a man who has lost his. Instructions on the game of that is life that confuse instead of clarify and that give only one order: Learn to laugh. Life is ridiculous. "Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born and at once one is guilty." We fret and fuss over ourselves and agonize over decisions that can't be re-made, we curse who we are and sit alone feeling out of place in the world.

Yet, it seems that the only way to really embrace all of this is to step back and see the unending humour in it all. To detach that last little bit and see the absurdity and then to embrace it. To laugh at the world and to fill oneself with that gallows humour and yet to fervently take part in life and all its foolishness. What other way is there?

ZV

 

[upsciLLion]

In the stream of consciousness
There is a river crying
Living comes much easier
Once we admit
We're dying

 

[eigen]

agreed.

 

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
"One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too."

Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf" closes with those lines. 246 pages twisting and turning, circling back and forth through the mind of a man who has lost his. Instructions on the game of that is life that confuse instead of clarify and that give only one order: Learn to laugh. Life is ridiculous. "Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born and at once one is guilty." We fret and fuss over ourselves and agonize over decisions that can't be re-made, we curse who we are and sit alone feeling out of place in the world.

Yet, it seems that the only way to really embrace all of this is to step back and see the unending humour in it all. To detach that last little bit and see the absurdity and then to embrace it. To laugh at the world and to fill oneself with that gallows humour and yet to fervently take part in life and all its foolishness. What other way is there?

ZV

What is life? I am afraid that's one thing I have trouble attaching meaning to. I think it's just as complex as the question of from whence did we come and to where do we go? If we ever figured those out, much of the mysteries of life would be solved. It's hard otherwise to advance in the abstract question....

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: DearQT

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
"One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too."

Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf" closes with those lines. 246 pages twisting and turning, circling back and forth through the mind of a man who has lost his. Instructions on the game of that is life that confuse instead of clarify and that give only one order: Learn to laugh. Life is ridiculous. "Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born and at once one is guilty." We fret and fuss over ourselves and agonize over decisions that can't be re-made, we curse who we are and sit alone feeling out of place in the world.

Yet, it seems that the only way to really embrace all of this is to step back and see the unending humour in it all. To detach that last little bit and see the absurdity and then to embrace it. To laugh at the world and to fill oneself with that gallows humour and yet to fervently take part in life and all its foolishness. What other way is there?

ZV

What is life? I am afraid that's one thing I have trouble attaching meaning to. I think it's just as complex as the question of from whence did we come and to where do we go? If we ever figured those out, much of the mysteries of life would be solved. It's hard otherwise to advance in the abstract question....

Does life need an answer to its mysteries? Would not the loss of those mysteries mean the loss of life itself, given up in exchange for an existence? Why seek to destroy when we can embrace the mysteries and the incomprehensibilities and laugh with the immortals?

ZV