Was listening to a Blinkist on my walk today on the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Heard some interesting points that I wanted to share.

“Man is a rope stretched between animal and Superman — a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous trembling and halting.”

The short listen, “Blink”, got me thinking about a couple of things:

• We are always walking the path to our ideal state. At every instance in time, it’s important we take steps moving forward (even if the smallest step). In every move that we make walking across this tight rope, we’ll experience the feeling of pain or discomfort - whether that’s looking back, stopping, or moving forward. When you move toward the ideal state though, your next feeling will be a sense of relief that you’re one step closer to the end of your journey.
• You should go through your life and establish a set of values and rules that make sense to you. Don’t shift your ideals or values around the belief and notions of others who ultimately aren’t living your life and experiencing what you’re feeling. However, don’t go too far down the rabbit hole of “doing what’s good for you, and you alone”. Ultimately, we live with others, and we belong in community. That means we adopt the values of our community so that we can function and thrive in it (I.e. you can’t tell yourself cheating is good in a relationship, because your actions will affect your partner and those around you).
• Joy is the one thing that makes life and the pain/discomfort we experience tolerable. If life is ultimately full of pain and discomfort, what’s the point of living? It’s because of the small joyful moments we experience by ourselves or with others - at the end of the day this triumphs the discomfort you will feel.

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