KhaosTheory.com

It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve. To assume that if you want something bad enough you will end up having it.

When I remember some important relationships in my past that I somehow didn’t know how to manage, or outright blew off, I just hope my hardly acquired wisdom and experience will help me avoid making similar mistakes from now on. However, knowing how I often mistook passion for insight and acted according to faulty logic, I often question if that is likely.

Passion is a poor substitute for clarity of mind, and relationships are poor receptacles for dreams, as they have their way of unravelling at their own pleasure, just like the waters of a river follow the path that suits them most.

Faust or Faustus (Latin for “auspicious” or “lucky”) is the protagonist of a classic German legend who makes a pact with the Devil in exchange for knowledge.

The story concerns the fate of Faust in his quest for the true essence of life. Frustrated with learning and the limits to his knowledge and power, he attracts the attention of the Devil (represented by Mephistopheles), who agrees to serve Faust until the moment he attains the zenith of human happiness, at which point Mephistopheles may take his soul. Faust is pleased with the deal, as he believes the moment will never come.

In the first part, Mephistopheles leads Faust through experiences that culminate in a lustful and destructive relationship with an innocent and nubile woman named Gretchen. Gretchen and her family are destroyed by Mephistopheles’ deceptions and Faust’s desires and actions. The story ends in tragedy as Gretchen is saved and Faust is left in shame.

The second part begins with the spirits of the earth forgiving Faust (and the rest of mankind) and progresses into rich allegorical poetry. Faust and his devil pass through the world of politics and the world of the classical gods, and meet with Helen of Troy (the personification of beauty). Finally, having succeeded in taming the very forces of war and nature Faust experiences a single moment of happiness.

The devil Mephistopheles, trying to grab Faust’s soul when he dies, is frustrated as the Lord intervenes recognizing the value of Faust’s unending striving.

Faust wanted something valuable now and believed he could pay up at the end. Or even better, he believed he could get away with not paying at all. Throughout the story he realizes that for everything he got there was something he lost. The suffering and disappointment were the price to pay very step of the way.

I believe the lesson here is that we always pay the price upfront. Always. There are no shortcuts. There are no gifts. Even when we think we are getting something for cheap we are still paying dearly for it, we just don’t see yet how much.

http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Faust.html

If you had a chance to try anything one time, what would that be?

The question suggests “trying anything without consequences” and that is territory of fantasies, sexual in nature or not. The fundamental component of fantasies is that they exist only for their elasticity, their ability to instantly incorporate any new character, image or idea – or, as in dreams, to which they bear so close a relationship – to contain conflicting ideas simultaneously. They expand, heighten, distort or exaggerate reality, taking one further, faster in the direction in which the unashamed unconscious already knows it wants to go. They present the astonished self with the incredible, the opportunity to entertain the impossible^*.

One of the greatest discoveries I had during these last few years was to learn that women also have and express their fantasies in ways that are more rich and interesting than men. Nacy Friday’s book and some others were like finding a little window with a view to another world.