O sancta simplicitas!

What a strange simplification and falsification
people live in!
the wonders never cease,
for those who devote their eyes to such wondering.

How we have made everything around
us so bright and easy and free and simple!

How we have given our senses
a carte blanche for everything superficial,
given our thoughts a divine craving
for high-spirited leaps and false inferences!

– How we have known
from the start to hold on to our ignorance
in order to enjoy
a barely comprehensible
freedom, thoughtlessness, recklessness, bravery, and joy in life;
to delight in life itself!

And, until now, science could arise
only on this solidified, granite foundation of ignorance,
the will to know rising up
on the foundation of a much more powerful will,
   the will to not know,
      to uncertainty,
         to untruth!

Not as its opposite, but rather – as its refinement!

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Judith Norman, aphorism 24

Sunday, the first day of a new week. Some begin the day anticipating attendance at a house of worship.  Others look forward to participating in a sporting event to challenge and improve their skill. A player leans into the uncertainty of what he/she does not yet know: play to improve. Again, community with others affords enjoyment. And I, begin my day as is my habit here at Starbucks. I have opportunity to read, to play with words, to do my best to improve.

The first entry in part two of Beyond Good and Evil begins with the exclamation in Latin, holy simplicity.  For us in the west anything said/written in Latin seems elevated, the odor of divine purity.

We seek simplicity, a routine, “knowledge” to support our zone of comfort, much as a mammal in the wild will follow a beaten trail across a meadow. Such paths feel as if “holy”. I know that I gloss over, rush past whatever is strange, unfamiliar to me. My day to day is a composition of assumptions, simple preferences to ease my way through life.  Of my habits I am certain. They are the foundation of my life. Rarely do I think about them.

When reading Nietzsche I am reminded that what I “know,” is but what I prefer, that I have constructed a beaten path, to which I dare not, ought not become overly fond, too attached.  Curiosity about what is strange, different, barely understood but interesting – is the name of this game, that we call life.

Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. Or to state differently, I perceive things as I am…  Not as they are.

Let go of certainty…  If I can…