“Do I strive after happiness? No, I strive after my work.”
Zarathustra’s war on comfort and why you must fight too.
“Go away from happiness! What is happiness but the sigh of a grave?”
“Do I strive after happiness? No, I strive after my work.”
This is the line that shattered my idea of a “good life.”
Not with volume, but with contempt.
Zarathustra doesn’t debate. He rejects.
Not just happiness but the entire pursuit of it.
I grew up believing happiness was the end goal.
All the sermons, all the slogans, all the school posters: they pointed there.
“Do what makes you happy.”
“Find your bliss.”
“Work-life balance.”
And then I met Zarathustra.
He didn’t offer an alternative.
He offered a battlefield.
Let’s be clear: Nietzsche doesn’t hate joy.
He hates what joy becomes when it's treated as purpose.
Happiness is not evil. But it is passive.
It comes when there’s nothing to fight, nothing to build, nothing to climb.
It’s the warm breeze after a conquest, not the reason for the war.
“Do I strive after happiness? No, I strive after my work.”
That’s not stoicism. That’s spiritual warfare.
He’s saying: my engine isn’t pleasure. It’s creation.
And if happiness comes, fine.
If it doesn’t? Good.
Because the flame burns hotter when there’s no comfort in sight.
This quote disgusts modernity.
It kills the self-care cult.
It ridicules safe spaces.
It demands you earn your life by force, not by feeling.
You can’t build a kingdom while chasing mood swings.
You can’t become great if you’re ruled by emotional weather.
And you won’t do the hard work if comfort is still your god.
Happiness is the sigh of a grave because only the dead stop striving.
I don’t wake up to be happy.
I wake up to write. To fight. To build. To sweat.
I wake up to work, like he did.
And every day I choose pain over peace, I hear him approving.
Not with a smile.
But with silence.
And that’s enough.