Nietzsche’s dream-vision tale concludes.  His spokesman Zarathustra comes upon a young shepherd lying across the mountain path in agony.  A dog howls mournfully as a Greek chorus would add commentary to a tragedian performance.  The narrator does not know if he is awake or if this is a dream.  And is there a difference?

The sleeping youth, has been set upon by a giant snake that has crawled into his mouth.  The narrator knows instinctively that one act alone can save the man’s life and he shouts to the young shepherd to do what he must do:

And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen. A young shepherd did I see, writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth.

Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one countenance? He had perhaps gone to sleep? Then the serpent had crawled into his throat—there had it bitten itself fast.

My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:—in vain! I failed to pull the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out of me: “Bite! Bite!

Its head off! Bite!”—so cried it out of me; my horror, my hatred, my loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of me.—

You daring ones around me! You venturers and adventurers, and whoever of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! You enigma-enjoyers!

Solve for me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret for me the vision of the lonesomest one!

For it was a vision and a foresight:—what did I then behold in parable? And who is it that must come some day?

Who is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? Who is the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl?

—The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent:—and sprang up.—

No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that laughed! Never on earth laughed a man as he laughed!

O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,- and now gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed.

My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present!—

Thus spake Zarathustra.

Life reaches a cul-de-sac when every move has been made, and a man or a woman, has run out of options–no more work-a-rounds, opportunities to kick the can down the road, no more hiding behind an ancient document whether a holy text, or a Constitution, or ideologies Right and Left,–there remains one thing, one thing alone left to do.

An individual must bite the head of the snake, the infantile insecurity within, recognizing that every element within our comfort zone is merely a placebo.  I must do what is necessary to save my own life, to engage raw reality,  no matter how difficult or painful, if I am to be saved.

No leader, no party, and nothing can save us but ourselves–and looking back, after the deed, one laughs out loud.

Laughter, laughter, one must learn how to laugh…..