The Vision and the Riddle — Thus Spoke Zarathustra

On a ship far from the Happy Isles, Zarathustra stays silent for two days, heavy with sadness. Then he tells the sailors a vision. In a gloomy twilight he climbs a hard mountain path with a dwarf on his shoulders. The dwarf is the spirit of gravity. It whispers that every stone Zarathustra throws up must fall down.

Zarathustra stops at a gate called This Moment. Two roads meet there: one backward into eternity, one forward into eternity. He asks whether everything that can happen has already happened and must return again. The thought frightens him. Then he sees a shepherd choking on a black serpent stuck in his throat. Zarathustra shouts, bite off its head. The shepherd bites, spits, and rises transformed, laughing a laugh that is not human.

The vision haunts him with longing and thirst for that superhuman laughter. The dwarf is the voice that says your effort is doomed. The serpent is the heaviest thought trying to swallow you. Courage means attacking, not negotiating with despair, because even pain respects a fighter who refuses to bow. Bite through what chokes you. What emerges may be more than the old you, and that uncanny laughter will not let him rest.