Well today is Good Friday. Do we not each celebrate this day in his/her own way? Even, to not commemorate at all! I am well acquainted with the meaning of the Passion story as held by Christians.

To be a human being, a Homo Sapien, is to belong to a species that assigns a value to every feature of the external world that activates one’s senses. I involuntarily place every event, every person, every experience, every story — into its coordinate within my matrix of the self. Each coordinate point, is a linked meaning serving as a component of my personality. At least that is the point of this quotation from Nietzsche, speaking through his alter ego, Zarathustra.

Humankind, man and woman – valuators!

This trait is momentous! It is an act of creation! As we assign values, we are creating ourselves! The technical term is “autopoesis”. You my friend, are a self-created poem. Or as Nietzsche wrote, “valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things.”

So, how about your “nut-of-existence”? How are you doing, really? Are you stimulated, growing, burgeoning with potential?

To circle back to the observation, today is a holiday of sorts, it is Good Friday. How do you think the interpretation (a valuation) of that story has shaped you? For it surely has.

Happy Spring-Happy Easter to you!

Values did man only assign…
Therefore, he calls himself
“man,” that is,
the valuator.

Valuing is creating:
hear it, you creating ones!
Valuation itself
is the treasure and jewel
of the valued things.

Through valuation
only is there value;
and without valuation
the nut of existence would be hollow.

Hear it, you creating ones!
Change of values — that is,
change of the creating ones.

Always does he destroy
who has to be a creator.

Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Thomas Common, The Thousand and One Goals, No, 15

I have an “Easter egg” of sorts for you. Here is a treat, a tune which seems apt as an anthem of spring. John Fogerty’s Proud Mary by Ike and Tina Turner. Rest in peace Tina…