(Source: hipshadowhunter)

That is life. The ability to transform anything in to something greater. Possessing this is the nature of life. Man is a great creature who has the ability of this. In to great harm and defeat he may throw himself, but through this powerful central force of life, which makes one, man or woman, in to a complete human being. To possess this, one must have the polar qualities; the boldness to approach ugliness, terror, and harm, and the taste and vision of the finest things. As Augustus said when he entered Rome ‘I found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.’ It must become an instinct for a complete distaste for all things vulgar and low, and a confidence in oneself that they possess an instinct that is to oneself irresistible, which seeks out and creates after the loftier taste of its elegant style, confident that wherever it enters, it will find the best of it, and make eminent where it creates. A hard confidence in Metamorphosis. Endure the heat, as coal must endure the heat to then become diamond.

I find the size of the task is found much smaller once we approach it. It is alike to a shadow that makes the object appear larger than it truly is due to the distance from its torch. Go to meet the task, and be face to face, you see the task has more to fear of you than you of it.

Attempt. And one soon sees the reality is not much different, for we changed even in the getting there. It is rather we that change, not the reality. And if one should strive therefore to paradise, let it be a paradise within ourselves, and have its outward expression as a symbol of its degree.

Sometimes I think who is it one must be to achieve their dream? More than what one must do, it is what one must become. For it is a fine thing to do a thing in the aim of achieving, but we must be one of the sort to achieve, the character, who by its own nature draws such a dream to itself. It is true that our circumstance counts for much but our dreams often for more. The very nature of man, that he dreams, desires, aspires, conjures to himself an image of a world and circumstance which is a great opportunity and resource, a pleasing image, is what ranks man greater than a simple animal who need only chase his food and procreate.

It seems that there is some truth that we do not hit the bull’s eye as much as we shape it, build it, make it, and form it. By which I mean we may do not so much strike it in a single shot, but we must continually attempt to strike it, and with such strike, create the target, which, though out of sight, was always there.

Metamorphosis is life, and it cannot be ‘this’ or ‘that’. The very happiness of man is the activity of his action toward this sort of mirage he places before him. ‘This’, he says, ‘is merely my trophy. But my happiness is the action I make towards acquiring it’. And so it is that great men create their prize. They create their goal to test their abilities as men, and to satisfy their happiness and to dispel their solemn mood. A man who does not dream, and make it difficult, is no creature above a beast. Strife is the activity of the good life, for it is the activity of the lives of all those we venerate. The dreamers of the world are the most complete men. And measured by what they undergo, what deeds are required to greatly satisfy their happiness. Even the harshest trials are done for our happiness. We put ourselves through terror for pleasure. Therefore it is brave to dream, therefore it is brave to be human.

When acting on my heart I do succeed

Then let action upon the heart proceed

For sure success is then devised

And luck be yours lest ill advised

   I believe the Greeks would have had no priestesses in the temple of Delphi if philosophy had not only just begun and they had access to our two millennia of wisdom; if an Emerson, a Montaigne, a Machiavelli, a Voltaire, a Nietzsche, a Gracian, a Wattles, a Goethe, had existed. Yet they had a Homer, in which the entire philosophy of the above is made in to fiction, as tales of adventure and heroism. Every man sees the difficulties and hardships of life. These are local and provincial thoughts. Do not be at home with them. Travel in yourself to that furthest distance to see, feel and understand your own joy, fuller life and find this necessary. Make ever fuller life your goal and satisfaction and never discard what you are for what it seems you must be. You never know who you are or what you can be without daring, without attempting to go further than yourself today. Action is life’s substance, do not talk me out of something if not discreetly talking me in to taking an alternative greater action.

 “Lowliness is young ambitions ladder whereto the climber upward turns his face.”

William Shakespeare

   The first act is this, to say your responsibility is self-responsibility. Self-responsibility, I cannot encourage that voice enough, it is the mark of success. Forget even diligence or hasty action. The moments we can count in life which fulfilled our life were the moments when we took ourselves in hand and made a segment of our lives better.

   Self-responsibility is living. Not only is this truly living, but it is the only way to live. And is the blessing of life. All that I have done myself has assisted me. The more I live in this way the more it is the correct and best. Every offering of fortune on the behalf of another pales grandly by comparison to this single act. Each appearance of this act is the seed of the next tree, and with further seeds, soon a forest. It is the highest definition of freedom. The ultimate representation. Not that man has nothing to do, but that he has everything to do and to his individual responsibility. There is no obligation but to myself. The surest way of success is to ensure others depend on such obligation.

   All responsibility must be to the dignity of your aspirations. But you must do more than think, or you will merely follow in the shadow of what you should live. The first point of Self-Responsibility therefore is knowledge. One must have one’s own mind, one must know how to make one’s own choices. Choices by and for, which may even be at the expense of everything held dear up until now. An obligation unto oneself. Everything else is merely an action in appeal to others. Therefore, know yourself first. If you don’t know yourself, you not only go astray, but never realize your happiness.

   Genius is the art of surprise. The courage to believe your own thought, to take the risk to live through your own private thought, fearing not that it may be right or wrong, but that it is your thought, that is genius. No one knows what can be done until you have tried, attempted, and have done it. The great man is he who has a gift for detecting his thoughts which are gleams of his own true light. Had we each known what our own gleam of light was, we may have more genius. What truly makes a consummate man is that they live through thoughts the rest of us dismiss. Put forward a thought that’s yours, and put forward an action from that thought that’s yours. I cannot be both a genius and a man. The former pioneers to unknown, the latter commonly exists and has already proven itself a mediocrity.

   Any man who talks you out of your thought talks you in to nothing, and such then when every thought is dismissed you find yourself in nothing. It is the fear of the will, the will or the private thought which cannot be proved but is superior to proof, for action cannot be undone, all proof conforms to it. Action taken place cannot be unproved, doubts are spoken beforehand. We do not risk. We act. And in acting create an event that cannot be undone, and proof conforms to it. What proof had thought could not be done, what proof had doubted, now must doubt itself. We are inclined to fear our private thought. We do not wish to make a mistake, worse still make such a mistake as to be a fool. So we shun our thought for its peculiarity, its unfamiliar colour and shape to others. Common sense presumes a thought of one’s own is a thought already dismissed by everyone. As though reason had already called such thought in to question and convicted it. The greater man allows it to be acquitted.

“Trust thyself”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

   Don’t let the past define you. Live ever in a new day and let the present call the past in to judgement. I may have more reason than every other single thought not to make an action. There are a million reasons not to and the only reason to do so is because I know in my heart it is true for me and the right thing to do for my choice. The only reason I have this thought is because it is my thought, that is well enough, the only reason I am taking this action is because it is my action, that is well enough. The decision if it be under my own private constitution which has reared me thus far, then it is mine. Give me not to reason, it is well enough that is true for me. Follow your own thought, trust in yourself, and let proofs conform to you.

“With the exercise of self-trust, new power shall appear.”

                Ralph Waldo Emerson

   And I have to make that the strongest. I will brave to put my life in the trust of my own thought. Though it takes me away from everyone to people unknown, though it takes me away from everyone else’s thought to that of my own. Though we imagine the outcome, enjoy the journey, more benefit will be done to ensure a good outcome if the journey is enjoyed than understood bitter for a doubtful outcome. Enjoy the journey; trust the pleasure of your heart.

“I must be myself. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

   I thought to myself “whatever must be done, the action must be bold!” That is the right way to behave. Leave right and wrong aside, nothing is either. Trust your private thought and let action be its finest voice. A man is a shame who acts as others will have him. Trust your private thought and let action be its finest voice. Most of the time bravery has nothing to do with it, a circumstance presents itself and necessity simply takes over. No word of boldness, the word means nothing. It is at all times necessary to trust in our own private thought, and when this thought speaks through action it is considered bold by its witness, but necessary to its actor.

   Time best tests the heart, some things I know to love because I loved it then and love it now – I will love it again tomorrow.

“Believe your heart, especially when it’s tried and tested. Never contradict it, for it can usually foresee what matters most. It is your private oracle.” Baltasar Gracian

   My heart is superior to reason. The heart listens not to reason, consults no thought, but measures itself against the trust of its inclination. Trust the feeling. Let not the heart be compelled, but compel the world to come to it. You don’t travel anywhere. You bring to you. Take the responsibility to bring to you. In life we simply set little things around us. We are magnets from our heart. The strength is alike to a magnet. That brings to us what in our heart demands. Your world therefore has conformed to the heart. Set things about that are good for this heart, that the heart has by its nature demanded. We remain what we are. So what magnetic power has your heart? What people, places, worlds does it bring to itself?

Then let the heart remain with thee

So home is never missing me

   Move no further than our heart moves from our senses. In height we grow, in muscle we earn, yet neither distance we travel, nor gravity we lose, from ourselves. To put down what I think and what my heart says: that is my proper business. And I consult only this oracle. Put action in the trust of your heart, and should your heart be taken up again, put action in to another. But wisely choose, and listen not to reason, but to the thought that speaks through the heart. The gut will usher action in. Will you be a man who acts upon his heart and trusts in the guidance of his thought that is true to him? A man who acts – or a man acted upon?

“DUKE: Who are you?

MIRENO: I am not yet – but I will be. In attempting to be more than I was born.”

                Tirso de Molina

“What proud badge of love he used to wear

Has dropped from his chest without a care.

In my experience I know the sign:

His heart has left him, no longer mine.”

There was once a man, in the lemming history of our race, that was so noble he more than lived, was indeed as though born in to a living dream. Just as when one is dreaming one may know one is dreaming and begins to enjoy the imagination of the dream and do what one may not always do. Just so this man knew he lived and was born in to life, and knowing this he lived with imagination and pleasure at knowing he was living. He lived with all awareness of the shortness of life and lived for the age he was and to enjoy greater pleasures in time to come. Many feats he achieved by the distance of his ambitions and efforts. A curiosity lay within him to pursue what one living was capable of as though it were a man in a dream who had just realised he was dreaming. There was a spirit that was present for adventure, love, the arts, and curiosity for life and the living. He carried a stringed instrument that played sweet sounds as he strummed, there was a book of verses that pleased the ears of his hearers as he read them, there were pictures that pleased its viewers, and his conversation was much enjoyed by any guest. His living life took him to many places who it mattered neither how near he was or for how long he knew them, the one’s remembered were the one’s who made an impression to the development of himself as a living person, and were an important character in the adventure he continued to live. He tried many trades and accomplished everything he tried. He rose in his community and bestowed great things to the city which people could enjoy and which beautified the city. In 1606 he left the living and began dreaming in an eternal dream, maybe in that too he could know he was dreaming.

 la vie passe comme un songe; Il me semble que c’est un songe, que fait un songe

   To rub shoulders with the best rubs off on you, the bee brushes the flower and the pollen leaves with the bee. We require friends for qualities we do not inherently adopt. And a good friend can provide in a week what would take generations without.

One is often is only as good as the company one keeps. To choose what is available over what is best is a matter of judgement and taste. The test here is the effort one strives to be the best. Even at the expense of their locality, that is to say, to be the best, they will earn a perspective for themselves that they belong only in the best company, even if that renders all their immediate surrounding as the worst of places and the worst of company, whilst always maintaining a pleasant mind at the knowledge of where they must belong to. The resources at hand should not be judged even equal to those afar by their convinience. Poor judgement will be to your inconvinience. Choose where you belong in every choice.

   I get to the point where life is always kind to me. There are plenty of resources availble which life has invested in which make the living day well, music, friendship, self-belief, the pleasant climate, sport, sunshine, the same things which make well for the richest and poorest.

How much more was needed to be happy and to love life, than anyone has ever dreamed of. I feel necessity taking over, the benefits of where i want to be forming, and the current climate of circumstance receding and the entrance of new people, location, resources, finance, habits, as though arriving in to new land, of a new community, where I must aim to belong to. I feel at the cross over, where one world ends and another begins.

In what circumstance we must change, we must also create a circumstance which we act upon. The more we affirm the action on the circumstance the more we define the circumstance. The grave circumstance is no more apparent than when we must act upon it. Yes, you may wish to act on your concerns and your concerns be the circumstance. But we make matters the worse by focusing our attention on the nature of concern. On the problem and not the solution. The appearance of the problem will always send you to the grave. To even concentrate from getting where we are to where we wish to be is a deception. For where we are is more often a delusion. The exact nature of our position is ungraspable and we never truly affirm it nor recognize it, we only describe it as the task warrants necessary to the action. Truthfully, we are never far away from our goal.

Did I mention the finest rule of all success and the one that sends all successful men to their target at the swiftest pace? That is of facing the task. Of facing the task before them. The one who succeeds does not turn head or back away from the task. The successor remains fixed to the task. Better still, they are compelled to face the task. This is often more a factor of their success than their vision; the energy for the vision need be strong, but stronger  still is it to face the vision in the midst of the awareness of being without it. By facing it you have immediately tethered yourself to your goal. Don’t turn your back unless you do it to seek your goal with a greater aim. Returning to it with added skill, dexterity, voracity and commitment. There is a maxim that we must understand better “he goes back, they say, why does he go back? Ah, but they misunderstand him. He goes back as anyone goes back whose about to take a big leap.”

   If you have lost focus, you need only make yourself aware of your task. In many cases, the vision does good, but too much good that it very well soothes the burden of the task, and dries it up. The task must be fresh if it is to be faced. There must come the awareness for action. The vision instructs us to what must become real, but the task insists that it must become real. The vision is a wise thought, but does not represent our prudent action by which we attain it.

I caught a fish it was not for me

So I sent it back to the sea

Go be with the other fishes

This fish is not for me

   On the ship’s prowl the waves crashing at the sides, the boat unsteady and keeling as I ride. I send my nets out to the sea where fishes I spied, the net I did plunge in to the wine dark sea. To bring back the fish that caught my eye and bring some away with me. This net, then, did sink and embraced the sea, and many fishes were caught in its arms. Drawn together, the net enclosed these fish and I pulled on the pully on deck. Up came the net with many fishes inside, jumping and flapping when they arose. The net was drawn over my boat and let open at last for these fish to fall on the deck.

   So many were judged to be good or to be bad, and this is how I decide. Was this too small, too pale, too strange, too wounded, or just of a different kind than I like, and did not mean to catch but only found itself caught as I spread my net about. But one in particular did catch my eye that seemed a great and lovely sight. And I didn’t shift my glance from its sight the whole while once I saw it there amongst the rest. To me it seemed wonderous and fascinated me the more special that I aspied it to be. And left the other fish dull by comparison and no interest I had, that I sent the rest back to the sea.

   Now left with one fish onboard, oh how absurd, to think one fish can be worth the three dozen. But all I could see was what was wonderous to me, and I could not escape this impression. I kept this fish safe from slipping back out to sea and placed it near the starboard side in a bucket of sea water so that I may revive what life it now lacked on land. But the fish didn’t respond to the favours I gave. And still I offered the fish more. I hoped in my all to revive something in return for that sight that I saw at the first.

   But nothing would do, for every effort I made I recieved none but the same impression I had at the start. And this went on for longer than it should and I tried to be good to myself if I could and throw the darn fish back to sea. But every time I lifted that fish in my hand and made the gesture to throw it, I felt I’d done wrong to myself and I’d miss that fish that still fascinated my mind. So I drew it back and placed it where it had been and fell in to old ways trying with effort to do much and recieve the less.

   So long did this happen that I became so hungry and I needed a meal to devour. But nothing on deck had I save this fish as the only food around. And yet I couldn’t devour what was so raw and so fatal a meal as this fish would be. This fish at last made its fatal mark, a punishment without its revenge. No matter the favours I spent of my time, this fish I needed now most of all. But it wouldn’t do, this fish would make no stew, and this fish was at last no good.

   No good had it been all along, I now know, and I no good to myself. What time I’ve spent between these waves with this fish who has brought me to no better place. And now I’m worse off and cannot be worse if I threw this bad fish back to sea.

   So lifting this fish from its bucket I sang as I threw the darn thing back to sea:

   “I caught this darn fish

    A fish not for me

    On this boat on the rocky sea

    Go be with your fish

    You belong in the sea

    This darn fish is no good for me”