Hello everyone, I’m curious about Nietzsche and the will to power so I have been trying to figure out just how powerful the human will is, so I have been asking this question to everyday people like ourselves. What is the most difficult thing you have ever accomplished. I don’t mean things that are beyond your grasp, like dealing with a death, but rather things in which you are required to push yourself beyong the limit in order to finish them. For myself I suppose I would say a 15 page term paper for an upper level communications course, but it seems, looking back, that it wasn’t really that difficult, and I know that this is nothing in comparison to what some people do everyday. I would love to hear some replys, Thanks.
The best thing that I have ever done of this nature was to get a woman that had no insurance a free liver transplant. The woman lived in a city 500 miles away and I had never met her. Anyway, I used a variety of my special buzz words and verbal techniques (very Jedi-like I kid you not) on a whole variety of people to get the job done.
The great thing is that almost everyone responded to my argument that money isn’t real and that it was our ethical duty to help others in need. I was amazed at the response that I got from that.
So, I used my will to almost magically make people do things that went entirely against what they should be doing. Oh well, that’s my job as a bull taking care of the herd.
An eighty mile hike through Ocala national forest when I was fifteen years old. I was in a wilderness camp at the time (as an alternative to training school…another story altogether) and the event was a planned “theraputic” trip.
Theraputic? I’ll say. I dunno know about learning group skills…but I sure learned how to bandage a blister on my heel without breaking the skin.
Anyway, I liked the hike, even though it kicked my ass. We were all carrying at least sixty-five pounds each and hiked an average of eleven miles per day for a week.
There was this one kid who refused to carry his pack and me and a few stronger kids from the group divided his stuff up between us, so the little fucker would quit whining.
Let me ask you folks, could you do it again, would you do it again, and for what? Could you imagine actually doing something more challenging than these tasks?
I suppose the point I am trying to make is that we don’t come close to our real potential. Hell, I could write a 150 page paper, but what is it that holds me back.
My philosophy professor mentioned that it is possible that the things we do are merely a result of a number of neurons and synapses in the brain that are firing. For example, when you go to McDonalds, why do you pick the double cheeseburger. Why don’t we decide on the double cheese but then go with the chicken sandwich. Is it freewill? You tell me…
Back in the 80’s I beat the arcade game “Black Tiger” on one quarter, with with the first of the three lives. But I must readily admit Alderians was better. 
i got lost skiing on a mountain in the alps once when i was 12, on the first day of the holiday, and without any french and not knowing where we were staying managed randomly to ski my way home.
but yeah, adlerian’s is prolly that little bit more heart-warming.
Very funny guys!
15 Page? What’s so difficult about that…
I sold a person a brand-new $60,000 car! 
I am not making this up!
I was passing through the sales-department of the dealership where I work, and a customer (who had just walked in) started asking me a ton of questions about a certain Audi car we had in the showroom. He obviously thought that I was a sales person. I happened to know the answers to all of his questions. He then stated he wanted to buy it. I directed him to the front desk so the cashiers could do the paperwork and take a deposit. He ended up speaking with the general-manager afterwards stating that he was pleased with his “experience at our dealership”. The general-manager was too embarressed to tell the guy he had just been sold a vehicle by a 17-year old Porter/car-washer. The funny part is that the guy was terribly undecsisive. He kept trying to get me to tell him how to buy a used Audi (we do not sell any used cars for some reason).
This whole thing took about 3 hours (the dealership is rather large, and it is easy for the real sales people to overlook un-helped customers), and my boss almost fired me for “having taken a 3 hour break”!
by the way, the car he bought was a 2006 Audi A6. 
My girlfriend got beat down with a bad case of swollen tonsils and a fever of 103.5. I took her to the doctor(She had no insurance) and they gave her a shot, and a perscription. I took the perscription to walgreens, and was dismayed to learn it cost $135 to fill. We didn’t have the money, so I asked him if there was a cheaper drug I could buy for her. He said “no” and reminded me she really needed it. Thinking for a second, I replied "Thats ok I know what to do, I will stand at the end of the ramp with a sign WILL WORK FOR MONEY TO BUY MY GIRLS MEDICATION FROM WALGREENS. The guys reaction was…well… I don’t know what to compare it to. He made a call, and somehow we got it for free. It was a experience I wish everyone could have at least once in their lives.
That was a great story Dave!
This was the worst professor I have ever encountered, some sort of crazed Dr. fundamentalist abstinence type, not to mention the fact that she was a bitch.
That is pretty cool, David. Perhaps there’s some compassion left in business, or at least in some businessmen (and women). I recall a ways back when I was out of work I had a bad dental infection (wisdom tooth) and since I lost my insurance with my job, I couldn’t afford the antibiotic nor the Vicodon. Yikes, you can’t imagine the pain. Luckily a family member lent me the money, and you can’t imagine how grateful I was.
Maybe that’s why I’m so paranoid about being broke nowadays- I’ve been there and I don’t want to ever go back. I avoid using credit cards and always keep five or six months pay in the bank. Okay, the fact that I worked for credit card companies for 5 years opened my eyes, too. 
opened your wallet, too, maybe?! just kidding witchoo…
For all it’s worth, I have always considered life as somewhat of a fight… a struggle of some sort… or even a race. Man… in his pursuit for happiness, trying to regain reconciliation with himself, with God, in a desperate pursuit for recognition of his merits… a continuous tussle to edge in front, a biblical Jacob fighting with an angel.
To some extent, all this is virtually a waste of time, because most people eventually get to the conclusion that all their efforts are meaningless and , all in all, fail to offer any real satisfaction. Life is, in a way, like a play of Eugene Ionesco: apparently logical, but in reality a mix of absurd phrases and acts of no major relevance.
The secret in all this, in order to grasp the more subtle essence of existence, is to elevate the way in which you perceive life and give a higher value to everything you do, so that you may become a hero of daily existence each minute. The absurd of life can be ebbed away by transcending the immediate reality, into a universe of meaningful actions. I guess this is the hardest thing one can ever accomplish, because it involves faith, will, and keeping an open mind.
word, homie.
Winning a/my league championship in College Basketball (and getting 1st team all-star and playoff 1st team all-star in the process ) by 1 in overtime of the final game.
Spending 2 hours a day, 6 days a week with the same bunch of guys (not to mention road trips and tournaments) for 6 months… pushing yourself to the limit pretty much every time, with nothing but fatigue and more schoolwork as a reward… only to come together in the end and pull out a win was the hardest/best thing I’ve ever done.
And now this year we’re trying to do it with a perfect record… (8-0 at the break ) if we can do that, that -that- will have been the toughest thing I’ve done so far.
When I was 11, something happened that made me extremely pround. The organisation without a name made up of my classmates managed to dominate our school’s machoist world. We had a fearsome reputation among the several schools within our district. We achieved this dream that every schoolboy then dreamed of, by means of two years’ delligent and creative organisational development. The genisis of this organisation was consisted of a bunch of 9 year olds, surrounding a funstory teller that was me myself. I made them laugh. In time I found out that my listeners developed an almost irrational trust towards me. This is what made me first tasted and realised politics. I learnt a lot of things that normal 20 year olds had no conception of. Now when I read Nietzsche, especially where he reduces things to their original simplistic forms and demostrats developing processes, I understand by memory from that period of being a boy who acted mindfully and darefully in the streets after school when others were doing their homework, or playing chinese tags, ping pong, hide and seek. I wouldn’t dig Nietzsche so much if I never had such an experience. I look shoulders to shoulders on rulers and conqourers of all kinds of all time, not from bottom up. Now Nietzsche tells me to look at them top down. Anyway, when the time was ripe that I thought my gang was numerous, confident and well organised enough to challenge the 12 year olds, I draw up a preparation plan which eventually gave us the winning factor. Toy guns, or rather plastic replica models with potentially fatal shot power were popular then. It was being illegalised due to its danger but there were plenty underground activities remine. Our parents didn’t allow us to buy them, we were spared just about enough pocket money to get lolipops. We need the biggest and most dangerous guns for each of us to carry, show off and cock around. We needed cash, a lot of them. My plan was essentially, a theft mission. The target was the crap houses in a particular villige like community just opposite to our school. I ranked my gang like an army and everybody had their mission. I remember planing this whole thing every night for almost a month, during which time my pals completed my homework for me. It was touching brotherhood man, we were as high as a bunch of kamazaki samuries. After week’s on and off steeling in this villige after school, we gathered in total 2030 yuan, exceeding our target by 30 yuan, about the price of medium sized “shotgun”. 2000 yuan was my father’s monthly pay multiplied by almost 3. I hide the cash with my own hands in my most trusted “general”'s bedroom, for a night. The next afternoon we bought enough “guns” so plenty so that myself ended up possessing 6 of them. Wish I could still tell the makes and gauges. My father, who was extremely liberal in comparison with other parents at the time, marvelled at my possessions and played merrily with them himself. He shoot explode a limelight that was quite far away in front of our patio. I asked him why. He anwsered he never expected that the toy to be so accurate and powerful. I laughed at him and he blashed. From then on I lost my natural respect to all grown men. This was how, my, gang achieved its ultimate goal since it started more than a year ago. The story ended up being one of my members got caught steeling money from his neighbour. The little bustard told them all, even though the grand theft happened months ago from then. This was the end of it all. The school teachers held a meeting over us. It was hell. I learnt nothing the whole term due to being constantly expelled from classes to do cleaning as punishment, and nobody talked to me, not even some of my former pals, that was what hurted me the most. I failed them by trusting too much on a certain stupid little punk. I could still kill him today. He trasfered to another school in the other side of town after the event, because some of my former gang members made death threats on him. Things like this actaully happened among school students at that time, so the teachers got scared and persiuvaded his parents to move home. The shit that surrounding this event, plus the disappointment of the collapse of, my, organisation, made me from then on a strictly book reading student. I don’t regret for having read so many books since. What I regret is that some of the spirit of the 11 year old me is now long lost. One of the main reasons that I’m reading Nietzsche, is an attempt at finding out what it exactly was and getting it back in its full upgrade and valour.
agree with the last bit - but i reckon that ‘struggle’ is a bit of a negative way of seeing things. i prefer to use the word ‘challenge’ anyway, i’d only even use that kind of word to talk about certain ASPECTS of life, not life as a whole - do you really think of your life overall as a struggle? seems to me there’s quite a bit of potential for luck, love, happiness, etc, happening without us trying too hard…
totally agree, and not sure i’ve ever heard these thoughts (which are totally what i believe in) articulated by someone other than myself!! it’s all about believing in meaning and weaving it into your life for yourself to take part in. it’s a completely faith-driven decision, as you said, and it’s totally made by yourself, for yourself, but taking the decision to create meaning is the perfect solution for a life otherwise full of philosophical indecision and doubt. s’what i reckon anyway.