Happiness Like Tar and Honey
Inspired by “O.G. Rose Conversation #122: Cadell Last on “Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership & Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
The animals come to Zarathustra in “The Fourth Part” and ask him if he is ‘perhaps looking out for [his] happiness,’ and I like to imagine him smiling.1 ‘I am concerned with my work,’ he says, but the animals are adamant that he is surely resting ‘in a sky-blue lake of fhappiness.’2 He replies with something interesting:
‘[…] you know that my happiness is heavy and not like a flowering wave of water: it presses me and will not leave me and acts like melted tar.’3
What does it mean for “happiness to be like tar?” Zarathustra laughs and says ‘[he] was abusive when [he] spoke of tar,’ and instead says ‘[i]t is the honey in my veins that makes [his] blood thicker and [his] soul calmer.’4 But the point is that Zarathustra’s happiness is sticky: it doesn’t “come off” easily. Once you dip your heart into the happiness Zarathustra speaks of, it doesn’t “fall off” or prove something that is fickle; rather, it sticks. Considering the context, Zarathustra suggests that it is through work and struggle that happiness can become “sticky,” and considering that Zarathustra then speaks of climbing mountains, perhaps we should think how we require a “sticky happiness” so that we don’t lose it on our journey? Without joy (which I am using in this paper interchangeable with “happiness’), we perhaps couldn’t make it up the mountain, losing hope along the way, which would suggest that “sticky happiness” is necessary and practical for accomplishing a great task. If our happiness isn’t sticky, it will fall off along the way. We cannot focus on it as we do our work though, and so it needs to “cling to us” on its own. If it doesn’t and requires constant focus, we will lose it.
Metaphors matter, and often I think we can associate happiness with something light and even “fluffy,” but Nietzsche here suggests happiness is heavy and even hearty. ‘[M]y destiny leaves me time,’ Zarathustra says, ‘it does not hurry and press me.’⁵ This time of waiting for destiny itself is a phase of life that might require a “sticky happiness” for us to get through, for there are many people who lose happiness “waiting” for their dreams, “what comes next,” and the like. “Waiting” is a challenge just like “climbing a mountain,” and both seasons will cause happiness to “fall away” if it is not sticky. “The Cry of Distress” section of Part Four warns Zarathustra that ‘the waves of great distress and melancholy’ are coming, and indeed they come for all of us. When the waves hit, the “stickiness” of our happiness will loosen, but if it is like tar it might not break away.⁶
Perhaps the hardest wave is ‘[the cry of] the higher man,’ the call of “The Overman,” and without the stickiest of joys, when that wave hits, our joy will be lost.⁷ Though we can associate “The Overman” with Dancing, we must remember this Dancing is on the other side of a Purgatory. Even Zarathustra, who we can assume is “always already” the Overman, seems to tremble with horror when he shouts ‘The higher man? […] What does he wants? What does he want? The higher man!’⁸ Everything is risked if “the higher man” calls us again, and to call again all the way in Part 4? After Zarathustra has gone through so much? Does the striving never stop? No, it does not. And realizing this is a moment when happiness can be lost for good. Unless it is sticky, which is why Zarathustra can stand, calm down, and say, ‘I shall look for him at once.’⁹
We see in Nietzsche a warning against pursuing happiness outside of “working on and for the Overman.” C.S. Lewis tells us that we must put first things first or risk losing both second and first things, which is to say if we pursue “our work,” happiness can follow, but pursuing happiness straight on can make it unknowable. Even if we find it, it will not stick. As soon as we are sad, lacking something to do, confronted with “The Real,” forced to do what we don’t want to do — our happiness will wash off and away.
We must earn our Childhood in Nietzsche; only an adult can be a child. Cadell put it well to note that Zarathustra’s fruits were ripe at the start but Zarathustra was not yet ripe for his fruits; likewise, when we are born, our fruits seem right, but then it takes a life-work for us to be ripe for our fruits. This might sound disappointing, but it is only through a life-work that our happiness can be sticky, and it is only a sticky happiness that can last and prove to be what we want. Happiness must be like tar to be like honey.
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Notes
¹Nietzsche, Fredrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (as featured in The Portable Nietzsche). New York, NY: Penguin Press, 1976: 349.
²Nietzsche, Fredrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (as featured in The Portable Nietzsche). New York, NY: Penguin Press, 1976: 349.
³Nietzsche, Fredrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (as featured in The Portable Nietzsche). New York, NY: Penguin Press, 1976: 349.
⁴Nietzsche, Fredrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (as featured in The Portable Nietzsche). New York, NY: Penguin Press, 1976: 349.
⁵Nietzsche, Fredrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (as featured in The Portable Nietzsche). New York, NY: Penguin Press, 1976: 351.
⁶Nietzsche, Fredrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (as featured in The Portable Nietzsche). New York, NY: Penguin Press, 1976: 353.
⁷Nietzsche, Fredrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (as featured in The Portable Nietzsche). New York, NY: Penguin Press, 1976: 354.
⁸Nietzsche, Fredrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (as featured in The Portable Nietzsche). New York, NY: Penguin Press, 1976: 354.
⁹Nietzsche, Fredrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (as featured in The Portable Nietzsche). New York, NY: Penguin Press, 1976: 355.
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Metaphors matter and this one is sweet :]