21 Dec Each man had only one genuine vocation -to find the way to himself. (HERMANN HESSE)
At this point a sharp realization burned within me: each man has his “function” but none which he can choose himself, define, or perform as he pleases. It was wrong to desire new gods, completely wrong to want to provide the world with something. An enlightened man had but one duty -to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led. The realization shook me profoundly, it was the fruit of this experience. I had often speculated with images of the future, dreamed of roles that I might be assigned, perhaps as poet or prophet or painter, or something similar. All that was futile. I did not exist to write poems, to preach or to paint, neither I nor anyone else. All of that was incidental. Each man had only one genuine vocation -to find the way to himself. He might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal -that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny -not an arbitrary one -and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness. The new vision rose up before me, glimpsed a hundred times, possibly even expressed before but now experienced for the first time by me. I was an experiment on the part of Nature, a gamble within the unknown, perhaps for a new purpose, perhaps for nothing, and my only task was to allow this game on the part of primeval depths to take its course, to feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. That or nothing!
I had already felt much loneliness, now there was a deeper loneliness still which was inescapable.
Someone who seeks nothing but his own fate no longer has any companions, he stands quite alone and has only cold universal space around him. That is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, you know. There have been martyrs who gladly let themselves be nailed to the cross, but even these were no heroes, were not liberated, for even they wanted something that they had become fond of and accustomed to -they had models, they had ideals. But the man who only seeks his destiny has neither models nor ideals, has nothing dear and consoling! And actually this is the path one should follow. People like you and me are quite lonely really but we still have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different, of rebelling, of desiring the unusual. But you must shed that, too, if you want to go all the way to the end. You cannot allow yourself to become a revolutionary, an example, a martyr. It is beyond imagining -”
Yes, it was beyond imagining. But it could be dreamed, anticipated, sensed. A few times I had a foretaste of it -in an hour of absolute stillness.
Demian
Hermann Hesse
Image: Man in London | http://eurozpravy.cz/pictures/photo/2016/12/04/young-man-1515412-1280-4fc13e9687_660x371.jpg
