Women instinctively find their love food on the ground like birds find seeds or fish. They circle in endless space, their instincts guide them over lakes, rivers, seas and ruts, and then, after complicated zigzags and meanderings, they strike at the same time. Their instincts and judgment are wonderfully revealed at this time. They are very rarely wrong, and only sometimes it happens that the victim is stronger or more skilled, and slips out of their beak like a tadpole out of a seagull's beak. At such times they squawk like seagulls; and they fly further, circling, circling, tirelessly, alert.
Every man whom God appoints to a role is lonely. Jesus spoke from the cross to his mother as rejecting all human compassion. This is the most terrifying word in the Holy Scriptures. And Jesus said that whoever follows him leaves his family, leaves everyone. The man appointed to the role never demands less from himself and his followers. You can't change the world and in the meantime it's best to remain a husband, son and father, with four children, a spouse, a canary and a pension. The role always requires complete solitude, desolate solitude, merciless, almost inhuman behavior. Every person who undertakes the cause of the people is forced to undertake this loneliness and inhumanity as well. Anyone who does not agree to this is a cobbler; even if stretched.
Every age, every stage of life, yes, every day has its ten minutes of crisis, when everything that you have tolerated until then: your work, your environment, your feelings of loss, your desires, your nature - all at once, without transition, seems unbearable. This crisis is strong like an explosion. You lean over your work and at the same time feel the imperfection of the task you have completed so far, the unbearable hopelessness of the size and demands of the tasks awaiting you. You look over your life and, like a diver, you see everything condensed in the vortex of a single moment, for which you were a coward, lazy, liar or selfish, and which now threatens to overflow and drown.
This crisis, these ten minutes, these life- and work-threatening moments return more and more violently as time passes. It happens every day. In such cases, know that crises are bound by time; watch your heart and your watch. As someone who is tormented by a seizure and knows: seizures have a rhythm and a measured time. Give up your work for a short time, relax in the order of your days, try to be careless and humble. The ten minutes pass. Work and life, as long as they have something to do with each other, remain.
I know people whose education I admire, whose common sense surprises me, and yet being with them mysteriously exhausts me. And I know other kinds of people, who are perhaps not particularly smart or educated, who never say anything surprising or original, and yet after meeting them I part with them as if I had received something.
It seems that a person is not only his education and spirit, but also a kind of current that radiates from the individuality with varying strength and abundance. There are people who are low on electricity, and they draw power from their surroundings anyway. They are like electricity thieves, who use a wire to steal electricity from the wiring of the neighboring apartment into their room or for their business, which makes their apartment brighter and their business more industrial. People like that tire me out. They talked all the way through, and in the end you, the fellow listener, leave them poor and exhausted. These should be avoided.
And let's not talk about accidents that don't exist - like witches - anymore. I don't believe in accidents. It's just carelessness. You get hit by a tram, your luggage is stolen on the way, you are blackmailed by a thief and your name is dragged, you spoil your stomach with food and drink - and then? Why weren't you more careful? The world is dangerous, the possibility of an accident lurks in every situation and action of life, this danger and chance is clear with human life. Yes, maybe this chance gives a person a deeper hold and tension. Just think, what would a human life and the world be like without the chance of an accident? How smugly confident he would be, how shamelessly haughty and overbearing! No, the possibility of an accident lurks in your every moment, the objects, the situations, the people, the chemicals, the static and physical formulas: all of them are against you. So be careful. Do not watch out anxiously, but in a manner befitting your human rank, seriously and objectively, very attentively. And always know that it was not the wealth of the world that arbitrarily came against you when the accident happened, but that you were weak, lazy and petty. There is no "tram accident". There is only you and the tram and the world order.
The compulsion to chatter is a clear law of life for most people; they chatter while they live; they chatter as long as they live; they do not think, but chatter, so they feel that they exist. But in reality they are not, in the sense that the thinker is; they only chatter; and he who chatters does not think. A thinking man listens whenever possible; and when he can no longer listen, he speaks or writes. But he only does this as a last resort. No, for the chatterbox, prolific speech, with which he brings into the world all the mixed information, alkaline desire, clumsy observation, superficial perception, which his sensory organs convey to his consciousness, is a necessity of life. Maybe he would crack if he didn't chatter. He does not consume the material of the world; he immediately spits it out and vomits it, as raw as he received it. There is no command or threat that can put a lock on your tongue. he fills the world with chatter, which then becomes unbearable: concepts disappear when the chatterer speaks, and the world is filled with words.
But you don't always have the right to be silent; especially when the chatterbox speaks, sooner or later you have to answer. Of course, nothing would be more attractive or more comfortable than always and every time listening to people and speaking to the world only through your work - through your work, which could be a book or a pair of decently sewn shoes, or just the fact of a patient and balanced existence . That would be the most beautiful; but life does not give the solution so cheaply. You must listen, but not as one who listens out of comfort or pride or contempt; you have no right to this, because you are human, and your fellow human beings have the right to ask you for answers to their questions. No, you have to listen like you're guarding something. And indeed, whoever listens responsibly always preserves something: a secret, a rank, the self-awareness of human education. But sometimes you have to speak, you have to throw off the dark cloak of silence, you have to step onto the stage naked, with the fair weapon of the human duel, the truth, in your hand. If someone denies the truth, you have no right to listen.
There is something poignant about forests, especially pine forests. It is not only their dark and consistent silence that shocks me, but also their deep shadows, temple-like majesty and reverent demeanor. The will to live, with which a large forest expresses the forces of the world, is touching. Just imagine what kind of forces and intentions built the hundreds of thousands of fifty-meter tall pines! What did nature waste in seeds, stamens, seeds, experiments, sunshine, rain, and wind while such a forest was built! And how purposeful and silent this existence is, which wants nothing else but to be, only to grow up and remain for centuries, fully expressing itself, breathing, responding to the world - and at the same time it does not fight against anyone or anything, it gives home and life to billions of living beings . What a great and wise community this pine forest of fifty thousand moons is. Like the forefathers, the pines watch over life. With their huge trunks, they correspond to the earth and the sky at the same time. Go to the woods whenever you can.
But when you go to the great forests, or to the deserts, or travel on the sea, and your soul is filled with the feelings of majesty and infinity, do not deceive yourself: know that deep in your heart you only care about people, nothing else. There is also a crowded coffee house as interesting as the Atlantic Ocean or the Sahara or the pine forests of the Carpathians. Yes, a single man, when he shows his being and reveals his secret, is more interesting than Mont Blanc. Admire the infinity of nature, try to live in harmony with your character and the forces of nature, but don't be ashamed and don't deny that even the most majestic spectacle of nature will surprisingly quickly lose its true interest and appeal if it has no direct connection to the fate of people you know. The wildly fictional landscape will soon become meaningless and boring if man does not appear on the endless stage of nature, the only true and never-boring object of your gaze and interest. Your job, your experience, your role, your destiny on this earth is man, not Mont Blanc. The world is only color and scenery, which you observe in passing; your heart and mind are trembling, only watching the monologue of this suspicious hero. Everything else is boring sooner or later.
Tolstoy was right, music is the biggest fence, the most dangerous seducer. The mind starts narrowing when you hear music. Music is counterintuitive. It does not want to understand, like the intellect, but to spread, to upset, to disarm, to seduce, it touches the secret and the painful in us, it reveals what we have so carefully hidden from ourselves, we have disciplined with all means - it is like spring wild water, it upsets with concern by reason parceled, cultivated and worked, regulated and disciplined areas. Wherever music flows, the laws of reason no longer apply. In the beauty that the music gives, the sick feelings of the lustful destruction of the death wish ripple. The music is an attack. The man who has dedicated his life to knowledge, discipline and reality should defend himself against music, close his ears. Life is much poorer without music. But it is more human, tougher, sadder and more meaningful.
Herodotus, who gossips so delightfully about the Greeks, Persians, Medes, Lydians, about the fate of the peoples and leaders of antiquity, advises that it is okay to arbitrarily and artificially resist the luck that flashes its star towards us. All ancient peoples, the Persians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, all old religions warn lucky people against eating their stars. The will of the gods, fate does not tolerate lasting luck: this is what Herodotus experienced on his wanderings, this is what all old sayings, religions and superstitions teach. Your house is not yours, your gold, your wife, your children, your health, your glory, all these are yours only as much as the chance of luck in a game of dice. Everything is yours for a moment: then the dice turn. That's what the gods want.
That is why nothing is so touching as the story of Polycrates, with the ring, the fish and the fisherman. Man feels his fate and wants to escape from this fate with sacrifices. But the sacrifice doesn't help either: the gods are merciless. Fortune smiles upon you cruelly, and if you tremble and turn away from it, it rushes after you, only to be humiliated and robbed by fate.
So what is yours, what is it that the gods cannot take from you? Only the work. The work that expects no reward, neither beans nor offspring. It just happens to you if you don't get away from it and don't care about its fate either. Only the fatigue is yours, the sweat, the sacrifice. Everything else is more fragrant than the morning mist, more fragile than a butterfly's wing.
On a train or on the deck of a ship, people feel that they have stepped out of the usual laws of their lives, they start to chatter, they are more sociable and confidential, they wait for a miracle, they wink encouragingly and hopefully at their fellow travelers. Be careful not to hurt them. When they approach you - when they turn to you with their questions, awkwardly and awkwardly, but still with touching human hope, such as: "What do you think, will there be a porter at midnight at your Castle?" - answer with a smile and few words. Do not reject them, because in this state of mind, when the train or the ship flies them towards the supposed miracle - every change: waiting for a miracle - they are sensitive about it. Smile, nod, then turn to your book or the landscape. Don't make them feel that there is no miracle. It's true, don't convince them of a miracle. Just say that maybe there will be a porter at midnight at the Castle. Not a word more.
Most people are mortally wounded in a sexual duel. His vanity cannot endure love, nor unlove; he suffers from loneliness as much as from living together; he flees into pigsties, or into lonely roles fueled by insults and desires for revenge.
We can only remain powerful over our senses if we learn modesty in time. There are no permanent "sensual solutions"; maybe even friendship is not permanent; nothing that is human is permanent. There are no emotional "five-year plans" on the plane of human life; there are only situations that are always imperfect. "Great feelings" are the most violently offended, and always prematurely. The temporary rebellion of our senses must be endured as one of life's great trials. You must accept that there is no solution, only patience. into a nobler intention, it melts passions in the crucible of work, it distills vanity from strength in the flask of humility: it acts wisely. But this is the most difficult task in life.
They are waiting somewhere, and time is already passing, it's morning or afternoon, and you haven't finished your work yet. Do you want to hurry? Are you in a hurry, do you casually pay attention to the only meaning of your life, your work, because they are waiting somewhere? Let them wait. No one and nothing is important, only your work. Time is not important either - don't let time interfere with your work.
The time of day is not important, just as it is not important who is waiting and for what purpose they are waiting somewhere? And it is also not important that you could do something for your health, if you could leave your office early, take a walk in good weather, or visit one of the useful and healthy baths where your body will refresh. And neither is your lover, the powerful or influential person whose friendship you miss if you wait. Nothing and no one is important, because you will die anyway, and until then you have to do your work. Just pay attention to this; not to the clock or the calendar.
Because there is not only laziness for good. Another sin is the quickness to do good, the Hebrew overzealousness with which some people always jump up from their seats, or from their work, or from their relationships in order to do something good - they wipe away a tear while walking the dog, handle a death or a marriage crisis on the phone, shake hands, express their condolences when leaving to the grieving parent due to the death of a child, and they usually intervene, but only briskly and incidentally, in the misery of others. A cancer patient is told to eat a lot of watermelon, and a broke person is advised to watch Chaplin's latest motion picture. These itinerant peddlers of goodness and compassion trade in lousy and not entirely harmless wares. Candy canes are given to the sufferer. Don't accept their goodness, spit out the cheap candy they offer you.
And train your soul to have an inexorable sense of need. This is the most important. The world of the masses is only greedy, but not demanding. You remain moderate and demanding. The world is becoming more and more like a kind of Woolworths store, where you can get everything for a sixpence, in shoddy design, which can satisfy the daily desires of the pleasure-minded masses quickly, cheaply and with excellent quality. The dangers of this mass gratification are already showing themselves, in all areas of life and spirit. A culture is destroyed not only when barbarians appear with hatchets in the fine squares of Athens and Rome, but also when these same barbarians appear in the public squares of a culture and carry out a large demand, supply and exchange of goods without need. You choose. Don't pick and choose with squeamishness and snot, but strictly and ruthlessly. You cannot be demanding enough in moral and spiritual matters. You cannot say consistently enough: this is noble, this is tinsel, this is value, this is crap. This is your job if you are human and want to maintain this rank.
If the headache stubbornly returns for several days, we should visit a reliable ophthalmologist, ask him to perform the necessary tests on us; and only then go to the internist.
Ordinary, everyday headaches are most often caused by nicotine; then the weather, the atmospheric pressure, the temperature changes of the days when the front passes; less often, some kind of dietary error; circulatory disorders are even less common. But it can also be caused by nervousness, cowardice, fear of tasks or situations. For acute vasospasm, I can recommend the following: drink a cup of hot, strong black, darken the room, lie down in bed, swallow one or two algocratines, warm your aching skull with the hot electric pillow, and lie still for an hour or two. This method is foolproof, and it absolutely cures simple spasms and migraines. In the case of any other type of headache, consult an ophthalmologist and internist immediately.
If you are hit by a big blow or mental pain, first of all, think that this is natural, because you are human. What did you imagine? You are human, so your loved ones die, your friends leave you, and everything you collected and loved flies away like dust in a windstorm. This is not miraculous, but according to the order of nature, this is simple and natural. What is more admirable is that great calamities do not befall you every day. You are human, so you must suffer; and your suffering will not last forever, because you are human. Your behavior in grief and in the midst of adversity is tailored to this truth. Never show pain to the world. Do not show arrogance or pride. Don't deny yourself pain, but know that pain and adversity are always failures. People think, “Someone important to them, someone they loved, has died; look, he's failed too." Feel the pain, but don't make a hiss. On the one hand, because when you hiss, when tears flow, in these moments you're cheating a little. Real pain is silent; tears and cries are already relief. Well, don't cheat yourself and don't make the world happy. Listen. Discipline your face, your movements. And if you're left alone with the pain, say like this: "Here, pain. But no matter how you will hurt, I know it's okay: because I'm human."
According to the French, only those who can see reality have a real imagination. This ability is rare. People think that fantasy is clear by dreaming up some phenomenon that never existed. But phenomena that never existed have no hands or feet, they are like griffins, and what has nothing to do with reality is boring and childish. Real imagination builds the new, the wonderful, the surprising from reality. Seeing reality is a much more surprising and imaginative undertaking than building dream castles from clouds that crumble at the first whiff of reality. Learn to really see an amputee, and you should know that he is more surprising and wonderful than the winged heroes of myths.
In our work, in our daily routine, in the way in which our character, intellect, and taste respond to the phenomena of the world, there is a kind of internal law in all of this, which we cannot arbitrarily circumvent with impunity. Don't want to work in a different way than your character, abilities and the nature of the work dictate. Don't want to be happy, rest, or do business in any other way than your character and nerves dictate. Adapt to the law, which inexorably dictates your place, your work and your attitude towards life. Everything must be carried out and accepted in turn: joy, sorrow, vocation, task, fall and death as well. Adapt to yourself, to the incomprehensible and harsh law of your life, which precisely prescribes the sequence, meaning and temperature of your feelings. Don't want to be smarter, smarter, happier, more talented, unhappier or more hopeless than you are. The law burns in flaming letters on the facade of the building of your life. Read this law, every day, every moment.
Your behavior towards the world and life should be pathos-free and emotionless. But work, creation requires something else: it also requires dreaming, it also requires pathos and high tide, it also requires emotional excess. Great works cannot be calculated with a cool head, paper and compass; just as you cannot create by speculation at all, nor can you create children according to plans drawn up on paper and pencil. You need feeling, passion, dedication and enthusiasm for creation. Catholic education leaves a lot of imagination and emotions in the soul, and such a soul may not stand up well to the hard and rudimentary tests of everyday life - it is carried away by its feelings - but it will be receptive to the problems of creation. Protestant education teaches us to be unemotional and fatalistic, and this is perhaps the most useful for everyday use. It is true that the consciousness of fatalism can only create hard lives; less often and poorly, large works. Therefore you remain, on Monday and Tuesday, when you have to bury your loved ones, or fight with your insolent adversaries, hard and unfeeling; and try to dream and don't be afraid of the tide when you create.
Don't be ashamed if you love animals. Don't brag if a dog is closer to your heart than most people you know personally. It is false prophets and rude, comical people who reprimand me for this affection and say: "You steal feelings from people and waste them on dogs! Selfish, harsh brother!" - don't worry about them. Just love your dog, this tireless friend with sparkling eyes, who doesn't ask for anything and more for his friendship than some kind of modest nudge and a caress. Don't think that he is motivated by tenderness and selfishness to love animals. They are our brothers, and they were made in the same workshop as man, and they have a sense, sometimes more complicated and subtle than most people. Let others call the love of animals a weakness, make fun of you for it - just walk with your dog. You stay in good company; and God knows that.
If you can, always live in such a way that you see one of the frozen masterpieces of the human spirit every day, even if only for a few moments! Don't let a day go by without reading a few lines from Seneca, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Aristotle, the Holy Scriptures, Rilke or Marcus Aurelius. Listen to a few bars of music every day, if you can't do otherwise, play a piece by Bach, Beethoven, Gluck or Mozart on the music box. Don't let a day go by that you haven't spent a few minutes looking at a painting or drawing by Brueghel, Dürer, or Michelangelo in the mirror of some good print. All this is so easy to obtain, and so easy to find the half hour needed for the masterpieces! And it is so easy to fill your soul with the happy harmony of human perfection! You are rich no matter how miserable you are. The fullness of the human spirit is yours too. Live with it, everyday, as you breathe.
This human ability is the most difficult to acquire, this quality against which the most secret instincts of our being rebel, because we are mortal, because our time is up, because our star is running out: this is the most painful duty, towards ourselves, our fate and its deepest meaning, our work. There is no true creation without the patience that can remain master over the infinite, most secret form of man. Because creation is never a magic show, lightning-quick art, sanzé-passé *, creative works cannot be pulled out of the cylinder. Not only the flamethrower: patience - the work itself is also patience, the patience of organic development, the miracle of restraint and maturation. To learn patience, in life and at work, is to learn the secret of the Creator. Just learn this lesson, you restless and mortal.
Consider before you pick up and start reading a book - at least consider it as you would when you shake a hand in trust. Because you give the book your soul's attention for a while; and that's a lot, because life is short and your soul is only yours. And if you've made up your mind and started reading, read slowly, very attentively and patiently, as if you were arguing with a fair explanation. And if a book goes against your taste or conviction, or if its presentation is boring and complicated: read the book through. But just because life is short and because the book is as many as a drop of water in the sea, choose the book carefully before you open its pages. Read consistently and faithfully, but choose carefully, because you are giving a piece of your life and mind to the book you are reading. If you have already started reading, stay loyal to the book, even if it speaks against you, against your soul and your mind. The book can also be an opponent; you have to fight him through the duel. But deal only with worthy adversaries; never with those who - as a poet said - need to be given fencing lessons during a duel.
Whatever happens in the world, don't forget the truth that the state and political power can never do without the power of philosophers and reason. It cannot be without it even when instincts temporarily dominate community life, or praetorians take the place of abdicating emperors *. neither can they permanently do anything against the power of reason. Always think about how Aristotle's education turned a talented man into a world empire? The Macedonian empire was founded by Aristotle at least as much as Alexander the Great. Never delay when you have to prove the power of reason against political and state power. Without the guidance of reason, the state is only a burden, and such a state, even in possession of political power, soon collapses on its constituent elements. Only the cohesive power of reason can shape the human community. The philosopher can be killed by the state; but he cannot live and remain without it.
In life-threatening situations, we must think that our time is definitely over, even if the hand of fate reaches us ten years earlier or later; because the content of life is the moments of great tension and creation, not the calendar period of existence. You lived when you expressed with all your strength the divine command that was the content of your life, you fulfilled it, enthusiastically and fatally, your duty. This moment was the time of a lifetime. Everything else was just preparation, waiting. And nature is economical: those it needs for its work, it does not let go prematurely; and if they have done what they were contracted to do in the great work of the world, he no longer cares about them. The danger to your life is therefore clear, did you live well, did you live bravely and dutifully? The rest are private matters, which deep down you don't even really care about.
Whenever you can - but never by stealing time from your work and acting in a hurry with a bad conscience! –, go to one of the public baths with thermal water, two or three times a week. Bathing is a very old human habit, and it not only trains and refreshes the body, but also the soul. Bathe slowly, according to the laws of your body, carefully and carefully. The healing waters permeate your body and invigorate your soul, calming your nerves from work and the world. The spas are a kind of wet monasteries where you can surrender your body and soul to a sober and fair rest. The sulphurous, iron waters affect the internal organs and our nervous system through the pores of the skin; the atmosphere of the spa, the veiled-humid environment frees you from the cheap ideas of the outside world. So bathe regularly and methodically, like the Romans.
Never mind if this habit of yours is despised by the Spartans; consider that Sparta did not give the world a single independent thinker, and in the end it perished anyway. Bathe with a clear conscience. Bathe methodically, alternate between hot and lukewarm and then cold pools and showers, surrender your body to the dexterity of the bathers, sit for a long time in the warm water, endure being wrapped in a cold water turban around your skull, surrender your body and soul to the warm water, the lukewarm silence for calmness, think, learn water patience, rest. You can't relax in the lap of the hurik like in the pool of a thermal spa. And never stay in the chamber heated with hot air for more than two or three minutes. And give the staff a substantial tip. And know that you are mortal, but you still owe your body something. For example, with the spa, twice a week; up to three times.
It is not worth lifting your pen, it is not worth putting a drop of ink on paper, it is not worth wasting a quarter of an hour of your life to write something that pleases the masses and semi-educated people, and the readers of which exclaim: "Oh! Yes! We thought so too!..." - because the official world hangs an order of merit on you, some literary company pays you a lot of money, and with the money you can build a nice house, which you can then fill with rare objects and noble furniture! Because what they like, the crowd, is it's always a misunderstanding on their part, or a betrayal on your part. What is an award, the golden smoke, a child's toy. And the amount of money you can get for doing work that pleases the world, the beautiful house you can build with this money, all this is just fog, the breath of the world forces will blow away one day Don't worry about anything but the voice that the angel calls out to you when he encourages you to work.
It is surely no coincidence that the most effective weapon of the Second World War was the airplane - the weapon that attacks vertically. Because all the wars of mankind so far have occurred and took place in a horizontal line. This war was preceded by the crisis known as the "vertical invasion of the masses" - the masses did not advance horizontally in the areas of an education, but within the framework of education, they attacked a way of life vertically. It is natural that this attack, this vertical invasion, when it turned into war, he looked for the vertically acting weapon, the bomb and the airplane, which suited his character.Great human changes of direction are always followed by the style and direction of the prop.