Willing

I found out that I have the superability to ride a bicycle one-handed. It gives me such satisfaction. While riding back to OGC in the cold, each hand takes it turn steering, while the other I keep warm in my jacket. Like how bees take their turn at the edge of the hive during winter. It seems we have a multitude of skills to master in a lifetime, a multitude of satisfactions to be felt. Schopenhauer claimed that art is our sole respite from our unhappy existence of willing. As if being stunned by beauty makes one temporarily forget despair. Does beauty not come in more guises?

I've been learning such great metaphors lately, from Sagan, Nietzche, Schopenhauer. By willing, all happiness is short-lived and ends the moment we acquire our object of desire. Happiness is thus the sunny expanse of the future, the nostalgic glow of the past, but presently a cloud follows us deviously, relentlessly, casting its awful shadow. I learned this today, during a lecture series dedicated to Nietzche, given by Nehamas. Nehamas who? Nathan says he is a famous Nietzche scholar, and I find that I am not immune to the allure of fame. I am drawn to famous speakers, their words automatically receive greater consideration. These lectures are a welcome break from the robotic excesses of physics. I have been itching to take a humanities class for a long time, ever since my UCSD days, when a path hadn't yet been chosen, and curiosity was rampant.