The Grind: Nietzsche on Dreaming

So, since at this point, I'm trying out new methods of cataloguing and expressing various segments of thought in writing, I figure I'd try out naming different segments in an effort to organize and catalogue (huzzah) various trains of thought. This segment, this named category, will follow a certain train of thought I've been on for some time: a dissatisfaction with the way careerism and concepts of happiness function in American society. Sometime when I'm feeling inspired, I'll maybe try to write up some intro or summary of thoughts thus far, but for now, I'd like to set up a platform for writing about these thoughts. And so, it'll be called, for now, with all embarrassed self-consciousness, The Grind. Funny to be self conscious and embarrassed about something no one is reading.

Anyway, I found this quote from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche a fitting way to start off:

Suppose someone has flown often in his dreams and finally, as soon as he dreams, he is conscious of his power and art of flight as if it were his privilege, also his characteristic and enviable happiness. He believes himself capable of realizing every kind of arc and angle simply with the lightest impulse; he knows the feeling of a certain divine frivolity, an "upward" without tension and constraint, a "downward" without condescension and humiliation-without gravity! How could a human being who had had such dream experiences and dream habits fail to find that the word "happiness" had a different color and definition in his waking life, too? How could he fail to desire happiness differently? "Rising" as described by poets must seem to him, compared with this "flying", too earthbound muscle-bound, forced, too "grave."

-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, #193