Lebensmüde: literally translates as “life-tired”
Interpretation:
1. You do such risky things that you clearly don’t care for your own safety
2. Entered a deep, physical state of not caring
I experienced “Lebensmüde” a short time ago. I went through a phase wherein I would bomb massive hills on my skateboard without second thought. Consequently, I sustained injuries on a weekly basis. Broken ribs and fingers, sprained ankles, chipped bones, and gnarly scrapes were all apart of the routine. This phase corresponded with my philosophy at the time which was more or less centered around existential nihilism. I didn’t believe in consequences and denied that life actually had a meaning. I don’t know what led to this toxic mindset but I’m glad that I quickly found comfort in practicing certain aspects of Buddhism.
“Melancholia is, I believe, a musical problem: a dissonance, a change in rhythm. While on the outside everything happens with the vertiginous rhythm of a cataract, on the inside is the exhausted adagio of drops of water falling from time to tired time. For this reason the outside, seen from the melancholic inside, appears absurd and unreal, and constitutes ‘the farce we all must play’. But for an instant – because of a wild music, or a drug, or the sexual act carried to its climax – the very slow rhythm of the melancholic soul does not only rise to that of the outside world: it overtakes it with an ineffably blissful exorbitance, and the soul then thrills animated by delirious new energies”
For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
I know these are two lines, but they work in tandem to teach a worthwhile lesson. John Keats preaches a valuable lesson which concerns itself with the importance of realizing our anguish. Furthermore, he notes the value of being aware yet not acting upon treating it; as said sadness is imperative in shaping ones character and self virtues. I share the same rhetoric as Keats. I feel that our sorrows helps shape the person that we want be. It drives us to become positive beings that will avoid the same actions that led us to anguish in the first place.