One of the things I learned as I got older is that what my smart-alec younger self used to think of as trite little homolies (you know, "do as you would be done by" and the like) actually contain an enormous amount of distilled wisdom.

Your post reminds me of "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", or that we learn and grow through suffering.

Lucy - I understand you perfectly. Using the Basic Training process as an analogy is brilliant!

Great post. I wonder if this "positive disintegration" business is as nuts as Nietzsche's "will-to-power" - when suffering is welcomed as the necessary stimulant to transformation, and one is willing to die in order to live.

Nietz saw sadness as a feeling we get when we face the gap between where we are at that instant, and where we wish to be. A sort of second act low point that needs to be overcome.

But with a Will-To-Power there is no sadness, no low-point. The question is never "what I could have been" but "what I could become, what I'm capable of becoming."

I wonder if it would be interesting to subtract the "low point" from the transformation arc? It might offer a new kind of conflict, one that has less to do with need vs. desire, and more to do with chance vs. infinity.

"Thereupon I advanced further down the road of disintegration - where I found new sources of strength for individuals. We have to be destroyers!"
Nietzsche - The Will To Power