Acquaintances make lighthearted comment concerning my fascination with Nietzsche.  Do they feel pity that I appear “stuck” on the writings of a 19th century writer, — a prototype of we psychologically troubled children of Enlightenment reason, of Christianity with all of it’s anti-reason?  I’ll never know clearly what they think about my lifelong deep-dive into this professor of languages.  What others may think is irrelevant.  It is enough to clarify my own mind and heart.  That is my work, a task that is never simple, or routine.

Nietzsche was a bone-deep skeptic.  How much is nothing other than what appears on the surface?  Rule of thumb: what you see is not what you get…  The Christian dictum of love-of-neighbor, understood as a commendable duty was met with Nietzsche’s wary suspicion.

Our love of our neighbor-is it not a lust for new possessions?
And likewise our love of knowledge, of truth, and
altogether any lust for what is new?

Gradually we become tired of the old,
of what we safely possess, and we stretch out our hands again.

Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer
assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months,
and some more distant coast attracts our avarice.:
Possessions are generally diminished by possession.

Is it possible to “fall in love” and to remain “in love?’  Nietzsche suggests this is not the trajectory of our desire.  No wonder so many love songs emphasize the transience of love.  Are we at the mercy of feelings, of promises which will prove empty with the passage of time?  Are we victims of a world weariness, what we safely possess becoming tiresome, desire arousing itself for something new?

Perhaps not!

Here and there on earth
we may encounter a kind of continuation of love
in which this possessive craving of two people for each other
gives way to a new desire and lust for possession
-a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them.

     But who knows such love? Who has experienced it?

          Its right name is friendship.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 1, Section 14 by Friedrich Nietzsche

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I suggest this tune as a lifeline for today’s journey.  Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers.