Ten years ago, when I was starting Radar Communications, a young, very smart Juan Alberto De La Roca, gave me this quote from Nietzsche. It's from the The Birth of Tragedy. Tonight, I found it in an box of old stuff. It's funny how words make more sense with time. In Media Vita (In Midlife) makes a lot more sense now, at 50, then it did when I was 40.
In media vita – No, life has not disappointed me. On the contrary, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year – ever since the day when the great liberator came to me: the idea that life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge – and not a duty, not a calamity, not trickery. And knowledge itself: let it be something else for others; for example, a bed to rest on, or the way to such a bed, or a diversion, of a form of leisure – for me it is a world of dangers and victories in which heroic feelings, too, find places to dance and play. “Life as a means to Knowledge” – with this principle in one’s heart one can live not only boldly but even gaily, and laugh gaily, too. And who knows how to laugh anyway and live well if he does not first know a good deal about war and victory.”
