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When I opened my eyes and saw actuality,
then I started to laugh and I have never stopped since.
I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living,
that the rich delight of love was to acquire a well-to-do girl,
that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties,
that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be,
that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars,
that cordiality was to say "May it do you good" after a meal,
that piety was to go to communion once a year.
This I saw, and I laughed.
But the spirit does not allow itself to be mocked,
and the gloom of melancholia thickens around you,
and the lightning flash of a demented witticism only shows you yourself that it is even more terrible.
You see, my young friend, this life is despair.
Hide it from others if you will, from yourself you cannot hide it: it is despair.
And yet in another sense you are too frivolous to despair.
You are like a woman giving birth
and yet you are forever putting off the moment and remain constantly in pain.
Were a woman in travail to get the idea that she might give birth to a monster,
her case would be not unlike yours.
What then is it you are afraid of?
You are not going to give birth to another human being,
you will give birth only to yourself.
And yet, as I know well, there is a gravity in this which perturbs the whole soul;
to be conscious of oneself in one's eternal validity
is a moment more significant than everything in the world.
It is as though you were trapped,
it is as though the next moment you would rue
and yet it cannot be undone.
But, if you want to go on amusing your soul, then do so:
emigrate, go to Paris
court the smiles of languid women,
forget that you were a child,
that there was sweetness in your soul,
forget that there still is an immortal soul within you
torture the last farthing out of your soul;
and when the carousel will stop,
yes, there still will be water in the Seine
and gunpowder in the shop for your gun.
But if you will not do that, if you cannot
- and you will not, you cannot -
then there is no other way:
despair!
And in despair conquer yourself, possess yourself,
become yourself in your eternal validity.
What good will it be for you to triumph over the whole world,
when you lose your own soul?
Any human being who has not tasted the bitterness of despair
has fallen short of the meaning of life