Before The Law

Yes…this is another one of those Philosophical posts…get used to it!

I have one obstacle to going to school (and eventually becoming a nurse) that I cannot seem to overcome. Last night, I was ready to give up. I don’t see a way out. Yes, I think God wants me to do this. Yes, I believe He will find a way. But, right now I’m not seeing that and I’m losing hope.

As always happens, I got that little wake up call in the form of a 2×4 upside the head. I’m pretty thick headed and don’t take hints well, so sometimes that is what it takes.

Today in Ethics class, we were given a handout with a reading on it. I’m going to retype it for effect.

Before The Law

Franz Kafka, from The Penal Colony

Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper comes a man from the country and prays for addmittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. “It is possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not at the moment.”. Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: “If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall, there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him.” These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected. The Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter.

The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: “I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything.” During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly, later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeepers mind.

At length, his eyesight begins to fail and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only decieving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radience that streams inextinguisably from the gateway to the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in those long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man’s disadvantage. “What do you want to know now?” asks the doorkeeper; “you are insatiable.” “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, so how does it happen that for all these many years, no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”

Ok…heavy reading there.  Some of it makes no sense. What is the Law? Well…we came to the conclusion in class that it represents Opportunity, or dreams and goals.  Who is the doorkeeper? After a lot of discussion, we decided that he’s “Obstacles”. He’s anything that could potentially stop someone from achieving what they want. The problem is, the man never tried to pass him. The Doorkeeper said “go ahead and go through if you like, and face the next doorkeeper. Instead of proceeding and confronting the next one as it came, he choose not to approach at all. Were the obstacles mostly in his mind? Did he, like I tend to do, decide that the obstacle was bigger than it really was? It is really just ’suggested’ that there is an obstacle there, since he never really tries, he never gets to find out if there truly is an obstacle of some sort.

We also drew a diagram, of a mountain, which represents life’s journey. This was a concept developed by a Philosopher named Nietzsche. Along the trip up the mountain, things sometimes get hard and there are obstacles and at that point, most people turn around and go back. Those people are “everymen”. But sometimes, there are people who actually make it to the top and the term for those people is “ubermensch“.

Be careful not to let the obstacles that you imagine in your own head stop you from doing what it is you want to do. Do you truly know they are obstacles or do you just expect them to be? Will you be an “everyman” or will you be “ubermensch”?