Shape of my heart

I am sitting on the verge of an abyss, reading Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I try to look around, see a shape, a colour, a being. But it is just us, with a book between. The other half sits this time next to me, smoking a cigarette. We don’t speak. We just listen. The sound of silence, the sound of people, the sound of life and death.

I think that if one reads this book with the eyes of the present it does not say a damn thing. It is old, too pathetic, full of misogyny – and we don’t like this, do we? But you see, going beyond that, looking at it with the eyes of the past, it does say the things that we carry inside ourselves, the things that we learnt, the things that greatest writers try to teach the human kind … things that most of us maybe we don’t hear, or see, or understand.

I close my eyes and I try to breathe. I can’t. I only feel her chilling breath beside me, and the smell of smoke and dust raising in the air. It is my world here, but it is she who is more alive than me … so the abyss becomes my sea, and I feel the cold water beneath my feet. I don’t want to open my eyes. I don’t want to fall. I don’t want to listen to her, although ...

We all knew this before, what Nietzsche said … I knew it, somehow I believed that all human beings carry inside themselves this a priori knowledge … but do they?

We know that we should not think only of ourselves. And still, so many are so blind by their selfishness. It is that “I”, that “ego” that is the most important. The one who destroys families, countries, people … the "I" who shapes wars. The "I" of greed. The world would be indeed a better place if we could all give (and forgive) more … but human beings simply can’t go beyond the “I”.

We know that we should not have children only for the sake of species, for our fear of death, for the way the world is and judges. And still, too many of us have children for these reasons.  

We know that we should offer kindness, generosity, the better half of us to the humanity. But let’s face it, how many of us do this? And if we do, what does humanity offer in exchange?

And we keep saying that “I want to be a better half of me” … what does this mean? Do we really become better halves or do we just become the image of the world, of other billions of humans before us? We are born, we get married, we have children, and the circle goes round and round. We believe that we are different, but we are not. From our parents who sometimes we hate, from our ancestors that we didn’t know, from all the people that we keep on criticizing, unable to see us in them. We are all just dust, just nothingness, with illusions, fragile bodies and minds, the image of the first man and the last one closed in our breathing. I am the first and the last Eve (and Adam), as we all are.

Those who do, those who give themselves to the world, those who dream to make a difference, those who shut up, those who forgive, those who know how to listen, Ubermensch, to please Nietzsche (and Uberfrau, dear friend) … how much can they last in this world? And what is beneath their shells?  

The one who is behind me. The sea who is beneath my feet. Who will save you now? Rejecting life with its absurdity, that’s your whisper. “I’m fine”, although I am not. Disappointment. Fury. Storm. Pain, deep, like the sea beneath me. The other half, who smokes her cigarette, always there – the only one who has always been present – waiting. For the jump. For the volcano. For the control.

And I just wanted to be happy …