Sometimes I come across a quote, or a saying, that gives me pause. Many times it doesn’t really makes sense to me at first but then there is something about the words that feel poetic to me
For the past 10 minutes I’ve been pondering a quote from Friedrich Neitzsche that said:
“I tell you: one must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”
I had to read it a few times and ponder it some before it started to speak to me. At first it was the juxtaposition of words, from chaos to dancing star, that began to naw at the back of my mind. What did he mean by that?
What chaos is he referring to and what is a dancing star? A quick Google search showed me that it came from one of his five published works: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Chaos, as Neitzsche refers to it, is one’s individual creativity. Then, when that creativity is sought through the acquisition of self-knowledge, the result is the dancing star, or ones unique contribution to the world, which is then followed by extreme happiness.
Without self-knowledge we’re all just a product of the world around us. We’re no more. We’re no less. We just fade into the backdrop of humanity.
When everything is the same, nothing stands out. Nobody steps forward to advance humanity. Art isn’t created. Life becomes a muted semblance of what it COULD be.
Embrace your inner chaos, your inner creativity, and persue the knowledge required to extended that inner creativity to the world. Your unique contribution, your dancing star, will help humanity to advance forward. To be more than same.
For humanity as a whole to advance, you must embrace your inner chaos. Don’t push away from it. Don’t push it so far down within you that your star fizzles out, or worse yet, it’s never allowed to be seen, ever.
How boring is the night sky without stars? How lame is humanity without you? Without your creativity? Without your dancing star?
Self-knowledge not only helps to birth your dancing star, but it also allows you the ability to appreciate the unique contributions of others. That’s how humanity pushes forward. That’s how we connect and become more.
Without dancing stars we’re destined to stagnate. Stagnation leads to despair, self-loathing, and depression.
Be you. Embrace your inner chaos. Learn all that you can and then release your creativity on the world. It’s how we advance as a species and how you find devine happiness.
Go forth and dance!