Becoming A Yes Sayer
A friend pointed me to this poem by Wm. Blake. How important is friendship, a few associations that are mutually cultivated for years, over an arc of time. I owe my growth as an adult to the recommendations received from friends, the books, poems, film, – all of that, the deposits in the bank of culture, payed for by many who are now dead, have made a difference.
The Garden of Love
I want to learn more and more
to see as beautiful what is necessary in things;
then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful.
Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth!
I do not want to wage war against what is ugly.
I do not want to accuse;
I do not even want to accuse those who accuse.
Looking away shall be my only negation.
And all in all and on the whole:
some day I wish to be
only a yes-sayer
The Gay Science by Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman, aphorism 276