One thing is needful—

To “give style” to one’s character–
a great and rare art.

It is practiced by those who survey
all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature
and then fit them into an artistic plan
until every one of them appears as art
and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye.

Here a large mass of second nature has been added;
there a piece of original nature has been removed
–both times through long practice and daily work at it.
Here the ugly that could not be removed is concealed;
there it has been reinterpreted
and made sublime.

Much that is vague and resisted shaping
has been saved and exploited for distant views;
it is meant to beckon toward the far and immeasurable.
In the end, when the work is finished,
it becomes evident
how the constraint of a single taste
governed and formed everything large and small.

Whether this taste was good or bad
is less important than one might suppose,
if only it was a single taste!

What am I going to do with myself?  As the years click by, in time, responsibilities, the non-optional obligations of nurturing children, of livelihood, of advancing in a profession become less important.  Change amounts to the elements of life maturing in their own time.  One recognizes the duty to reassess, to take the measure of what remains of the one life that one has been given.  Indeed, it is chance/luck that one is here at all, that one has journeyed this far…  Would you not agree?

What now?  And why, –what compels continued focus, additional effort?

…For one thing is needful:
that a human being should attain
satisfaction with himself,
whether it be by means of this or that poetry and art;
only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold.

Whoever is dissatisfied with himself
is continually ready for revenge,
and we others will be his victims,
if only by having to endure his
ugly sight.

For the sight of what is ugly
makes one
bad and gloomy.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 4, Section 290 by Friedrich Nietzsche