Although he died in an asylum at the end of the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche continues to speak to us today.  I recently came across a rarely published addendum to his work, Will to Power, and share it here.       

    So does Nietzsche write, "All these bold birds who fly out into the wide, widest open--it is true!  At some point they will not be able to fly any farther and . . . But who would want to conclude from this that there was no longer a vast and prodigious trajectory ahead of them.  All our great mentors and precursors have finally come to a stop  . . . and it will also happen to you and me!  Of what concern, however, is that to you and me!  Other birds will fly farther!"

    Although divining the precise intentions of Nietzsche's mind is difficult, it seems that what he is saying here is that even though we one day will "fly" no longer, others will.  The human adventure will continue.  It's a reassuring thought.  By the time he penned these words, Nietzsche, though he was the son of a Lutheran pastor, had come to reject everything about Christianity and its promise of eternal life.  It was a religion for weaklings, he averred.  Better to live bravely and die!

    Maybe so.  Our humanness is indeed wondrous and grand and, to this point, seemingly capable of sustaining progeny, seemingly capable of birthing even more "birds" to extend its experience of existence beyond the present.

    But then what?  Absent an eternal, when humanity is over, it will be as if it had never existed at all.

    Nietzsche's genius was to understand this more deeply than many of those who actually do trust in the fact of eternity.  More than most, he grasped the essence of what life would really be like without God.