The Zarathustra Sessions, Part 3: Saint Salieri

I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough to not know hatred and envy. So be great enough not to be ashamed of them!

—Of War and Warriors, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Ah, back into this again. I was­n’t plan­ning on writ­ing this tonight, but some­thing set me off.

I like how Nietzsche believes that two human “flaws”, which some view as sins no less, should be embraced instead of shunned. Most like­ly, he’s attack­ing Christianity, and it’s view of hatred and envy as sins (he goes on to attack oth­er beliefs in sweep­ing sub­ject dances). Personally, I think that he’s point­ing out the fact that humans are, in fact, human, and prone to err. After all, who is good enough to not feel such base emo­tions, even if only once-in-a-while?

It’s made me real­ize that some­times I should­n’t be so hard on myself. I should­n’t blame myself for feel­ing a cer­tain way, or hav­ing a cer­tain flaw. It does­n’t even mat­ter if painful emo­tions don’t gen­er­ate some­thing ben­e­fi­cial, like self-improve­ment.

Of course, if my base assump­tion is wrong, then I’m read­ing too deeply into this. Such things are always a haz­ard of read­ing trans­lat­ed mate­r­i­al, and all that real­ly mat­ters is whether or not it helps.

It’s tak­en me this long to real­ize that the best that one can do is try, not suc­ceed. That does­n’t mean that I’m going to set­tle for a life with­out self-improve­ment, it just means that I should learn to for­give myself before I learn to for­give oth­ers.

Because the for­mer has always been hard­er than the lat­ter.

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