Health Homework (54) Buy and enjoy something (for you) worth sharing (now) and giving away when you’re dead (for others)

You can make your own life better NOW, have more to share with your friends and family NOW, and have better things to leave to others when you are gone.

Of course, you already know that I appreciate art and architecture. Good art and architecture – including better music I suppose – gives me some hope that humanity isn’t completely lost…or if it is lost, it can be recovered.

Good art in the genres of paintings and sculptures shows that individual humans can achieve artistic and creative greatness; we can see the significance of our own lives in art created by others. Good art in the genres of architecture and infrastructure shows that groups of humans can work together to achieve beauty and functionality in ways that contribute directly and immediately to improvements in the quality of our lives as humans living and working together.

Now that I’ve happily crossed the 50-year mark (on more than one occasion), I’ve become more aware of the undeniable limitations of biology and the practical eventuality of “who’s gonna get my stuff when I’m gone.” If they’re gonna get my stuff, then it might as well be something worth having from someone worth remembering.

I have big feet (size 13 US, 47 EU) so I don’t personally have anyone in mind for inheriting my leather boots. But my brothers-in-law can probably make use of my leather and tweed jackets, even if they have to get them tailored. Watches are easy to transfer. Tableware is universal, and that’s what I bought today.

Nietzsche in Zarathustra, said that death should be a celebration and stimulus for those still living.

I show you the consummating [completing] death that becomes a goad [stimulus] and a promise to the living. The consummated [fully-lived person] one dies his death victoriously, surrounded by those who hope and promise.

Thus one should learn to die; and there should be no festival where such a dying person does not swear oaths to the living!

Whoever has a goal and an heir wants death at the right time for his goal and heir. And out of reverence for his goal and heir he will no longer hang withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.

And everyone who wants to have fame must take leave of honor from time to time and practice the difficult art of leaving – at the right time.

Do not allow your death to be a slander against mankind and earth, my friends: this I beseech of the honey of your soul. Thus I myself want to die, so that you my friends love the earth more for my sake; and I want to become earth again, so that I may have peace in she who bore me.

Download Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (complete PDF from Cambridge University Press) here

Last week I found a complete set of antique tableware, which I am presuming is from the same company (Oneida Community) that made my grandmother’s tableware, which my mom and I consciously and erroneously sold in 2012. So today I went back to the antique store and bought it, then started the laborious and meditative process of polishing it.

This afternoon, I wrote two of my friends:

From now on, I think I’m just gonna stay home and polish my new antique silverware that I bought today. Every time I go out, I just feel like I’m looking at a circus of humanity, so I’m probably better off staying home anyway.

We are all free to live small, boring, uninspired, meager and selfish lives. My grandfather did it very successfully, and my mom (bless her soul) did a pretty good job, too.

But we can also live the reverse—lives that are bigger, enjoyable, inspired, and generous. That’s what I encourage you to do.

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