Suppose that we said yes to a single moment, then we have not only said yes to ourselves, but to the whole of existence. For nothing stands alone, either in ourselves or in things; and if our soul did but once vibrate and resound with a chord of happiness, then all of eternity was necessary to bring forth this one occurrence—and in this single moment when we said yes, all of eternity was embraced, redeemed, justified and affirmed.
— Nietzsche
To be alive, “to be most vividly, most perfectly alive,” is to say YES to life in the face of all its beauty and brutality.
To be a yes-sayer is to be liberated from the “narrowness of perception” of our day-to-day worries so as to gaze upon the larger reality. It’s to have the courage to stand on one’s own two feet as a passionate being, one who holds on to that inner flame despite the bitter winds of life.
Much of the havoc we see in the world is provoked by people who’ve said NO to life. People who are afraid to let life flow through them.
Bitter, alienated, and resentful, the no-sayers have lost their sense of individual meaning and worth. They are victims of their own self-induced malaise. People who’ve been cut off from that lively connection with the transcendent powers that lie beyond the masquerade of the illusory world.
Senseless violence and seething animosity are manifested out of feelings of emptiness. Often these no-sayers, incapable of creating a purposeful life, indulge in behavior that causes harm to themselves and others. The act of destroying compensates for their impotence and feeds their frantic desire for power and esteem. If one cannot create, one destroys.
As the great social psychologist, Erich Fromm reminded us: “The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.”
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