How did I ever bear it?
How did I survive and overcome such wounds?
How did my soul rise again out of those killing fields?

Yes, something invulnerable, unburiable is within me,
something that would shatter rocks into pieces:
it is called my Will.

Silently does it proceed,
unchanged throughout the years.
Its course proceeds upon my feet,
my old Will; hard of heart is its nature
and invulnerable.

Invulnerable am I – only in my heel.
You ever live there,
none other than yourself,
you most patient one!
Ever have you burst
every restraint
of the tomb!

Within you still lives also
the shining dreams of my youth;
and as life and youth you sit here
hopeful on the yellow ruins of graves.

Yes, you are still for me the demolisher of all graves:
Hail to you, my Will!

And only where there are graves are there resurrections. 

-Thus sang Zarathustra.

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Thomas Common, Part II, The Grave-song No. 33

Does life have any point, that is, something in the fine print to illuminate my confusion? Thus far I’ve not discovered any such secret note. There have been times when my life, seemed as if facing a wall of hurricane winds. I could do no more than hold on, pray, anticipate the eye of the storm. Always, more winds are to come on the far side of the eye, and the eye of the storm moves inexorably…

Storms take many forms in our lives. In my case the onset of severe depression in my early 20s could have cost me an entire future life. Had circumstances not broken favorably, the support of caring others, learning opportunities, and the assistance of skilled therapists, – I would not have survived that storm. I know others who have endured diagnosis of serous illness, the side effects of treatment lasting months.  Others have endured divorce, or the death of a spouse or of a child. 

Homer wrote about Achilles, a semi-divine hero of the Iliad, who was vulnerable only in his heel. The child was inoculated against death. Achilles held by the heel, was dipped by Thetis his mother, in the river Styx. His heel was not dipped…

In the quoted segment, Zarathustra/Nietzsche reveals that he is invulnerable only in his heel! How ironic, and how true to life! The will to keep standing, to remain standing no matter the blows of bitter fate, amounts to a strong will. It is a matter of the heart, a tough, shock-absorbent will! Nietzsche’s wry comment is that his will resides in his heel!

It goes to without saying that you cannot know prospectively what you’d be able to endure, your pain tolerance. You’d have to be there first, in order to know.

This magnificent statement concludes the meditation upon life:

And only where there are graves are there resurrections.

*I have exercised a writer’s freedom to substitute contemporary terms for some of the obsolete language in the translation.