Nietzsche once said that compassion is the weakest human faculty. He prided instinct over what he called the "paralyzing subterfuge" of what we refer to as altruism - "you come first, I come second" - and wanted to reverse the pattern of forgoing something for someone else; he wanted to examine what he called the whole process of self-deception. For him, there was a certain beauty in the sincerity of "knowing oneself", a beauty in the instinctual reaction that always comes first and in the ability to live life with a charged authenticity to it.
Tonight I hurt someone I love very much. I said things without thinking, I offered up a part of me that I knew spoke false things, a part that I never want a part of. And I wish I could take it all back but I can't.
Perhaps Nietzsche was right when he talked about the authenticity of life; perhaps he felt suffocated by the self-decption around him; or perhaps, he never had someone he loved so much that he would want to seek to do right by that person. If I look deep down into myself, I would find that how I really feel and what I really want to say is something very different from the words that poured out of my mouth tonight; I would see truth and not be deceieved by an unconscious selfishness that sought to provoke and not love.
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