kneth_samurai
09-17-2008, 07:53 PM
* Just want to share this beautiful essay about Life from a periodical, regards to the author! *
The Bad Triad
I am hardly a culture vulture whose form of leisure is divining the metaphysical profundities. Yet, I greatly admire thinkers like Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus, and I occasionally take interest in their perplexing ideas. Nevertheless, those years of avid newspaper reading and over three years of working as a nurse have convinced me of a few truths about life. Specifically, there are three essential truths about life: first, that life is essentially difficult; second, that life is essentially absurd; and third, that life is essentially beautiful.
That life is essentially difficult is the first and most important truth. Each day, one’s sanity is at constant risk from the sight, sound and smell of a dauntingly difficult life. Every pore of this planet reeks of deterioration and decay and disaster. These are the proofs of the harshness of life. However, once we know and once we truly understand these difficulties, life is no longer difficult.
Second, life is essentially absurd. All the world is the Theater of the Absurd, and its inhabitants are actors playing the absurd characters. They perform a variety of ludicrous pursuits and irrational acts. Today’s headlines demonstrate clearly that many tragedies and sufferings are a product of absurd thought processes. Absurdity though is not necessarily evil. It can add spice to an otherwise boring and predictable life.
The third truth which redeems a life of depressing difficulty and appalling absurdity is the idea that life is essentially beautiful. What is beautiful? Beauty is simply whatever makes life livable. Truth, to be sure, is beauty, so is the necessary. There’s beauty when the husband takes the hands of his wife and plants a tender kiss on her forehead while she is sound asleep. There is beauty, too, in a person’s desire and decision to live whatever it takes. In the same way, beauty is the merging of harmony with the just. Therefore, what is justified, what is necessary, what is right, are a display of what is beautiful.
Responding to the interplay in the bad triad – the beautiful, the absurd and the difficult, is, indeed, what living is all about.
Young Blood, PDI
The Bad Triad
I am hardly a culture vulture whose form of leisure is divining the metaphysical profundities. Yet, I greatly admire thinkers like Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus, and I occasionally take interest in their perplexing ideas. Nevertheless, those years of avid newspaper reading and over three years of working as a nurse have convinced me of a few truths about life. Specifically, there are three essential truths about life: first, that life is essentially difficult; second, that life is essentially absurd; and third, that life is essentially beautiful.
That life is essentially difficult is the first and most important truth. Each day, one’s sanity is at constant risk from the sight, sound and smell of a dauntingly difficult life. Every pore of this planet reeks of deterioration and decay and disaster. These are the proofs of the harshness of life. However, once we know and once we truly understand these difficulties, life is no longer difficult.
Second, life is essentially absurd. All the world is the Theater of the Absurd, and its inhabitants are actors playing the absurd characters. They perform a variety of ludicrous pursuits and irrational acts. Today’s headlines demonstrate clearly that many tragedies and sufferings are a product of absurd thought processes. Absurdity though is not necessarily evil. It can add spice to an otherwise boring and predictable life.
The third truth which redeems a life of depressing difficulty and appalling absurdity is the idea that life is essentially beautiful. What is beautiful? Beauty is simply whatever makes life livable. Truth, to be sure, is beauty, so is the necessary. There’s beauty when the husband takes the hands of his wife and plants a tender kiss on her forehead while she is sound asleep. There is beauty, too, in a person’s desire and decision to live whatever it takes. In the same way, beauty is the merging of harmony with the just. Therefore, what is justified, what is necessary, what is right, are a display of what is beautiful.
Responding to the interplay in the bad triad – the beautiful, the absurd and the difficult, is, indeed, what living is all about.
Young Blood, PDI