Laugh!

The depressed, the apathetic, do not laugh. They hate, they growl, they become self-destructive. I know this from my own experiences.

Reading The Comedy of Existence: Superhuman Laughter – Nietzsche | Existentialism reminded me of this part of my life, of how I failed.

...Laughter makes it possible – if only briefly – to achieve some distance from things one loves, thereby enabling a less biased evaluation of their true worth. It enables one to take oneself less seriously and admit that some of one’s cherished beliefs are most likely false.

***

And yet, Zarathustra becomes what he is, achieving superhuman laughter. Perhaps this is because he laughs at the comedy of existence, including his own existence, because he knows that in the background there is nothing but absurdity and emptiness.

***

What Zarathustra has learned, the vital skill upon which his liberation and self-overcoming is dependent, is the ability to laugh at himself as a man ought to laugh. Rather than resorting to some sort of “bad faith” as existentialist Jean Paul Sartre puts it, Nietzsche laughs at the pointlessness of life.

Laugh and learn to create a life.

sch 7/18/22