ONE MAN RUNS TO HIS NEIGHBOR BECAUSE HE IS LOOKING FOR HIMSELF, AND ANOTHER BECAUSE HE WANTS TO LOSE HIMSELF. When you are in anxiety, anguish, trouble, life seems to be dark and a failure, you want to go to the neighbor somehow to lose all your anxiety with a few drinks, a good chitchat, gossiping, whose wife has run off with whom, whose husband is chasing after whose wife. One wants to lose oneself because the anxiety is too much.
YOUR BAD LOVE OF YOURSELVES MAKES SOLITUDE A PRISON TO YOU -- because you don't love yourself. That's why your solitude appears almost like a prison, and you want to get out of it. Run in any direction, do anything, but don't be alone.
Solitude is the most beautiful experience, the most glorious treasure that you have, but you have never explored it, because you have never loved yourself. Nobody has told you to love yourself. Love your mother, love your father, love your brother, love your sister, love your wife, love your children... except yourself.
Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." But his understanding is not very big, because who loves oneself? "Love your enemy as you love yourself, " -- but who loves oneself? He has no teaching for that -- first love yourself.
Zarathustra is a great psychologist: I DO NOT TEACH YOU THE NEIGHBOR BUT THE FRIEND. And the difference is great. The neighbor is accidental; it happens that he is your neighbor. The friend is a conscious choice. It is not accidental; you have chosen it.
MAY THE FRIEND BE TO YOU A FESTIVAL OF THE EARTH AND A FORETASTE OF THE SUPERMAN. Love the friend so much that the very friendship becomes a festival, and in your friendship is born the superman. Love is the fire that purifies the gold, that purifies ordinary human beings into superman.
➡️ Zarathustra; A God That Can Dance. (Commentaries on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra)