[Reader-list] Fwd: Two: Will to Life

[Ravikant]

----------  आगे भेजे गए संदेश  ----------

Subject: Two: Will to Life
Date: गुरुवार 27 जुलाई 2006 01:27
From: sabitha t p <sabitha_tp at yahoo.co.uk>
To: ravi kant <ravikant at sarai.net>, ravi vasudevan <raviv at sarai.net>, jeebesh 
bagchi <jeebesh at sarai.net>

Dear friends,
Just an update since the My Tryst with MS mail. I'm
coping fine, have joined back work and am indeed more
active than ever before.The positive thing is that MS
has made me realize the value of time and intermittent
good health a lot more and I'm a lot more active than
even my pre-MS days.
I'm working on two art-related projects (a global
installation project in collaboration with Subodh
Kerkar, a Goa-based artist, and designing a one-year
certificate course in visual culture studies to be
offered in Ramjas college, DU  and open to university
students next year).
Also planning a poetry society with my dad, Keki
Daruwalla, Vivek Narayanan and Jeet Thayil (My dad and
I sat and wrote out the objectives of the poetry
society while we were waiting for an MRI
appointment!).
Have been writing a lot of poems too and hope to be
ready with my first collection within a year. Also
writing a fellowship paper for ArtIndia magazine on
Company Paintings and Patna Kalam in the 19th
century. All in all my hands are full, I'm full of
beans and have the Will to Life and Health.
MS seems manageable now. I'm continuing with ayurveda
and nutrition therapy and the last relapse was after a
longer gap and was of lower intensity. My doc thinks
it's beacuse of my alternative therapy. And the i.v.
steroid drip for 5 days wasn't as bad as I thought it
would be. I just went every night for an hour, got the
drip and came back home. Am on oral steroids now. It's
giving me a little bit of muscle ache and some
insomnia, otherwise I'm ok.
Meanwhile a little extract from Nietzche's ECCE HOMO
(I think; please correct if wrong). From a chapter
called 'will to life' about his illness:

“ I placed myself in my own hands, I restored myself
to health: to do this first condition of success, as
every physiologist will admit, is that the man be
basically sound. A typically morbid nature cannot
become healthy at all, much less by his own efforts.
On the other hand, to an intrinsically sound nature,
illness may even act as a powerful stimulus to life,
to an abundance of life. It is thus that I now regard
my long period of illness: it seemed then as if I had
discovered life afresh, my own self included. I tasted
all good and even trifling things in a way in which
others could not very well taste them- out of my Will
to Health and to Life I made my philosophy.

For I wish this to be understood: it was during those
years of most lowered vitality that I ceased from
being a pessimist: the instinct of my self-discovery
forbade a philosophy of poverty and desperation. Now
how are we to recognize Nature’s most excellent human
products?

They are recognized by the fact that an excellent man
of this sort gladdens our senses; he is carved from a
single block, which is hard, sweet, and fragrant. He
enjoys only what is good for him; his pleasure, his
desire; ceases from the limits of what is good for
him. He divines remedies against injuries;
he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own
advantages; whatever does not kill him makes him
stronger.
He believes in neither ‘ill-fortune’ nor ‘guilt’; he
can digest himself and others; he knows how to forget-
he is strong enough to make everything turn to his own
advantage.

Lo then! I am the very reverse of a decadent, for he
whom I have just described is none other than myself.”
Warmly,
Sabitha.




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