On the intoxication of recovery
Many factors have converged to put me in a good mood. Today is the second day of the first annual Breakthrough Summer Fellows program, and in the two large rooms next door to me are 14 of the country's best and brightest undergraduates and recent grads. Expect great things from them this summer, on this blog and in the world.
The other factor is my recovery from a bad cold last week. I am now fully recovered. This morning I swam laps, and all of the various things annoying me (read: Lieberman-Warner) rolled off me with the water.
This got me reaching for Nietzsche, which will surprise anyone who thinks of him as a grumpy philosopher. In his most upbeat work, appropriately titled The Gay Science, sometimes translated as the Joyous Philosophy (the word for science in German is broader than our word, and connotes wisdom and even philosophy), he reflects on what a good mood recovery puts us into. He uses this to offer his characteristic observation that we and the world are in a constant state of change and becoming. As much as it confuses and troubles us, health flows from sickness, power from powerlessness, justice from injustice, and good from bad. A reason, perhaps, for us to be optimistic about the post-Bush era? Or a warning?
'Gay Science': this signifies the saturnalia of a mind that has patiently resisted a terrible, long pressure -- patiently, severely, coldly, without yielding, but also without hope -- and is now all of a sudden attacked by hope, by hope for health, by the intoxication of recovery. Is it any wonder that in the process much that is unreasonable and foolish comes to light, much wanton tenderness, lavished even on problems that have a prickly hide, not made to be fondled and lured? This entire book is really nothing but an amusement after long privation and powerlessness, the jubilation of returning strength, of a reawakened faith in a tomorrow and a day after tomorrow, of a sudden sense and anticipation of a future, of impending adventures, of reopened seas, of goals that are permitted and believed in again.