Stages As every flower fades and as all youth Departs, so life at every stage, So every virtue, so our grasp of truth, Blooms in its day and may not… - Hermann Hesse

As every flower fades and as all youth departs, so life at every stage, So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.

Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor, Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.

In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces, And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

Did all this make sense?

When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols...

The things we see are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.