Reeling

I feel as if I’m reeling. Nietzsche has effectively dismantled many convictions that I have long held to; or more accurately, that I have grown up with. Yes, I mean that in the sense that beliefs were passed down to me from my parents. However, the deeper connotation of the phrase lays in its proximity to who I am. Ideas of Christian superiority and singularity were formed and refined with ideas of words and triangles. When something is so intricately connected, separation can be painful. I acknowledged this possibility when I became a Philosophy major, and Nietzsche asserts the same idea:

“When on earth was it established that true judgments give more enjoyment than false ones… The experience of all severe, all profound intellects teaches the reverse. Truth has to be fought for every step of the way, almost everything else dear to our hearts, on which our love and our trust in life depend, has had to be sacrificed to it. Greatness of soul is needed for it: the service of truth is the hardest service.”

Nietzsche’s words resonated in my head as I experienced that feeling that soothes (if only in a small way) the soul. That is, the feeling that someone else has gone through what I am going through. Nietzsche saw, as I now see, the price at which truth is acquired. Though I have only begun to glimpse the beauty of the truth. The beauty of truth? Its beauty lies not in pleasure, it lies only within itself. Truth is beautiful because it is truth, not because it gives us hope or happiness.

And yet, is the truth so ugly that it only be called beautiful by its own nature? Must pain always accompany truth? Is a life of truth so devoid of hope and happiness? If not, why then is it the common response? Could it be the convictions of yesterday writhing in the depths of where they were formed; straining to regain the control they have lost? Like I said, separation can be painful.