Pleasure and Displeasure

All this pop-nihilism around us is not about tearing down power structures or embracing nothingness — it’s just, “Look at me! Look how brave I am!” 

                                                               – Friedrich Nietzsche

Quoting Nietzsche is a way to confront life’s challenges. We can claim that we’re unafraid, that difficulty won’t break us, that adversity will only assure us.

Nietzsche believed that hardship and joy operated in a kind of osmotic relationship. Diminishing one would diminish the others. In his treatise on poetry where his famous “God is dead” proclamation was coined, he wrote:

“What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other — that whoever wanted to learn to “jubilate up to the heavens” would also have to be prepared for “depression unto death”?

Keep in mind the need to balance pleasure and displeasure.  

Feel the necessity of not having everything just right. Discover many ways to get beyond the existence of displeasure. 

Become a warrior, not a worrier. Use techniques of gratitude, laughter, and loving when the down times prevail.

Face fears and find answers. Give your strengths courage in the moment. Then when the good times arrive, you will have earned their grace.