Schopenhauer is often described as the saddest of philosophers. Morose. Melancholic. You can’t read him and be inspired. You can’t ponder his words and think of the world as beautiful and with purpose and spirit.
However, there is a lot in Schopenhauer that brings solace, brings redemption to one’s soul. My mentor - Bohumil Hrabal always kept Arthur close to his heart. He was wise.
“Like a flash of lightning Arthur Schopenhauer appeared to me and said, "The highest law is love, the love that is compassion,”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude
Hrabal’s writing is very much about him dealing with his own emptiness, the same emptiness that Schopenhauer felt about this world. They were companions in the fight against the hollowness, and unreasonableness of life - an existence which gives no answers. I highly recommend this short essay by Hrabal - Why I Write. Also, my own piece, written just after Hrabal’s 5th story death, now some 25 years on.
Hrabal and Schopenhauer both were writers who explored the inner world, that surreal carpet and kaleidoscope that appears when you close your eyes. In that way, despite so many thinking of them as sad, they are both bright lights shining a positive message of our inner life and experience.
Here is a Christmas message from Arthur Schopenhauer. In his own typical melancholic style. But keep reading until the end.
I wish you the same. Take care of your inner world and experiences - it is the true conductor of your train that chugs forth through the little time and space you are granted.
Fate Is Cruel. Men Are Wretched
As all the external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their nature, highly uncertain, doubtful, ephemeral, and subject to chance, they dry up in certain circumstances; moreover, this is inevitable, as they cannot always be at hand.
In old age, they almost all inevitably decline; for it is then that we are abandoned by love, banter, the pleasures of traveling and horse riding, as well as the aptitude to play a part in the world, and even by our friends and relatives who are taken from us by death. It is then, more than ever, that there returns the question of knowing what every man has for himself because that is what will last the longest.
However, at any age, this is and remains the true and only permanent source of happiness. There is not much to be gained in this world: privation and suffering fill it, and for those who have avoided these, boredom lurks at every corner.
Moreover, it is usually mediocrity that governs this world and foolishness that speaks out. Fate is cruel and men are wretched. In such a world, the man who has a great deal within himself shines like a room decorated for Christmas, bright, warm and cheerful amid the snows and ice of a December night.
Therefore, to have a remarkable and rich individuality, and above all to have a superior mind, is undoubtedly the happiest fate on earth, however different it may be from the most brilliant fate.
Happy holidays to all!
DD
Your World Within