“He who has a why can bear almost any how” – Teach Different with Friedrich Nietzsche Finding Your Purpose Through Community

Transcript

Dan Fouts (00:09 )

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Teach Different podcast. We’ve got a wonderful guest today from a country just outside South Africa. Thandeka is her name. She’ll be introducing herself in a moment. She’s got a really interesting background that she’ll be sharing, and today’s quote is going to be from an existentialist from German culture, Friedrich Nietzsche. Most people have heard of him in some circles. He’s actually very, very famous for a bunch of different quotes, some of which are controversial, misunderstood, some of which are more accepted, but we have a really good one today that I think that can apply to everyone here. For those unfamiliar, Teach Different Method. We’re gonna share this deep quote, which we’re all gonna try to connect with. We’re gonna lay out the claim of the quote, try to interpret it. What does it mean? What does it mean for us? What personal experiences do we have that validate the truth of the quote? And then we’re gonna push against it, the critical thinking. We’re gonna see the world from another way of seeing and look at the counterclaim to the quote. And by doing that, we’re asked this a lot, Steve and me, why do you guys do this? Why do you do the counterclaim? Why don’t we just talk about the quote? That’s what most people do. We talk about the counterclaim because a lot of times that opens up new insights that we didn’t have before. And so in that way, it broadens our mind and our horizons. And in doing that, we also ask questions, which is the last part of the method that’s really important. Questions which can come during the conversation, we can have them after the conversation. We don’t even have to answer them if we don’t want to. But they’re an important part of this experience. So with that, let me get to the Nietzsche quote and then we’ll have our guests introduce herself. Frederick Nietzsche, he who has a why can bear almost any how. He who has a why can bear almost any how. Thandeka, welcome to the Teach Different podcast. If you’d be so kind as to introduce yourself, a little bit of your background, where you’re from, and then guess what? You get the first attempt at the claim of the quote here. So welcome to the podcast.

 

Thandeka Malaza (02:42)

Hello Steve, hello Dan. Thank you for having me on Teach Different. I am excited to be here and hearing why the podcast exists is actually, I think, a fun way to dive into the claim that we have today. So I have a background in mathematics and economics, so I graduated as a double major from the University of Witwatersrand, and my interests have always been development, not just of economies, but also of people, because I believe that anything that we do is closely related to who we are as a people or as a person. And I think that livelihood isn’t defined in this individualistic level. I enjoy social justice and conversations around social justice. I run a blog, She Writes and Speaks, and in this blog, I lean mostly on the human condition, on exploring existential claims and limits and why we’re here and why that matters. So I think the interest that I have mostly is always centered around impact and how this affects people. In my free time, I enjoy listening to music, and I think that also this has a direct influence into how we view the world. So thank you for having me and I’m excited to see how this conversation plays out.

 

Dan Fouts (04:06)

Great to have you here. Would you like to take an attempt at the claim? What does the claim mean to you?

 

Thandeka Malaza (04:14)

So to me, I think that the claim describes two aspects. One, we have to look into the why. And then secondly, we have to look into the how and what it means to bear any how. I think that why is closely related to our passions, why we exist, why we live, what makes us get up in the morning. And I think that this sort of claim has to be explored not just on a level of making a statement to say that just because I know that at the end of the day, I have to make money to survive, then I do what I do. But I think that something like why is closely related to anything that defines our life’s work, anything that defines our life’s purpose. And this, think, is more a mosaic. So it happens when you zoom out of the picture more than when you zoom in on the details. And so I think that the claim to me means that you can do anything. You can bear anything if you know what the end goal is. And the end goal is not just defined in terms of outcome, but it’s defined in terms of satisfaction to the human condition, not just joy or happiness, but a sense of I’ve done what I’ve come here to do, and it feels like a life well lived.

 

Steve Fouts (05:34)

I think about the phrase, your calling, know, finding your calling. And I don’t know if that fits the prism that you were sharing. It’s not all people have this, right? I don’t, I want to ask the group actually, what, what you feel that you’ve always known you’re calling. Is this something that Thandeka, what about you? Like have you always known what you wanna do or is that a discovery process? Because if you don’t know what it is you wanna do, you actually are inclined to quit things when the going gets tough. And I’m wondering what your situation has been. Have you already always been sure of that?

 

Thandeka Malaza (06:22)

No. So I think I actually struggled when I used the latter part of a framework. I had something that I like to describe as a perfect headshot of what it would mean for me to have quote unquote made it in life. And I think that this made it in life also fits into a very definitive framework of what it means to be alive. So if you’re conditioned a certain way, and you’re told that there are things in life that you absolutely must do, there’s this sort of urgency and rush to find your purpose. Because once you find your purpose, the assumption then is you’re going to be able to be productive. You’re going to get out of the slump that you experience as a consequence of being alive. And because then you found this purpose, everything is magically healed. But I think that the human experience is earned, right? I don’t think that the human experience we deserve if it such a thing as deserving, but you are here and that’s enough. And I think that you find out in the process whether or not you have a why yet. And if I don’t have a why by the time I’m 21, perhaps a lot of people can raise alarm bells and say you haven’t figured it out. But perhaps my process of finding out has been delayed for such a time that I meet a certain requirement of my growth to understand what is happening around me. So I can quit because I don’t know my why, but then does that then mean I’m failing my purpose? I don’t know, maybe I’m deferring that to any of you two as well to say, is it a productive experience and is there any value in going through the thought process? Or maybe I might be jumping ahead of the gun, I don’t know.

 

Dan Fouts (08:15)

No, that’s the nice part about these conversations, Thandeka, is that they just, we go in different directions. So no direction is a bad direction. I really like what you said that, I work with high schoolers, as I told you. I teach social studies in high school and the kids are always thinking about their purpose and very few of them know what their purpose is. And what I find is that there are some kids that are okay living in that uncertainty and they’re patient and they want to wait and find it. Others, I feel like they’re very rushed, whether it be their parents at home or their own expectations that they put on themselves, they feel like they have to find answers to what they want to do right now. And so they pick their college major when they’re 16. And I always liked looking at them and if they could only know what’s going on in the back of my mind, which is you might be changing your mind sooner rather than later and that it’s okay. Yeah, it’s okay. And so I don’t, again, I don’t know exactly what my ultimate conclusion to this thought is, but we can’t rush our why. It has to be its own pace and for some, it’s earlier than others, but we have to be patient with it or it won’t be the right why.

 

Steve Fouts (09:52)

Yeah, what I took from yours, Thandeka, is there’s a process to finding your why. That takes time. You know, the quote says, he who has a why can bear almost any how. Well, one of the hows is trying to find out what your why is. And there seems to be people that work at that and work at that and work at that and maybe not arrive, but they’re keen on it. They need to find a why. Whereas other people are maybe okay with not knowing their why. And it’s all over the continuum. Everybody’s different. So what I took from it is that idea of the process being the discovery of your why, and that’s gonna happen at different times. But when you find it, I kind of agree with the quote personally, the how is irrelevant. You’re on another plane, and you’re thinking that the how is part of who you are, even if it’s difficult. You know, you know that that’s building your strength, your resilience. And part of what you need to do is overcome these things, be a role model for other people. And the how is just baked right in to who you are. So, I’m hoping that made some sense.

 

Thandeka Malaza (11:24)

I’m currently watching Stutz, which is a documentary on Netflix. I’m not a big TV person, so I watch it in segments. But one of the things that I picked up from that was, there are three things we all can’t escape and one of them is pain. The second one is uncertainty. The third one is the constant work. And I think sometimes we’re so hung up on the outcome that we don’t want any variation on the latter part of the statement, which is the how. So we have a very clear picture of, I’ll choose my major in college when I’m 16 and I’m gonna get into college, I’m gonna graduate and this what I’m gonna become by the age of 22. By the age of 27, I have a white picket fence and I’m living a good life. And it’s a very linear path, a very linear progression. But mathematically, we know that you can’t really define a complex problem with a simple equation. There’s a lot of factors that go into that. So, the constant work affects different areas of our lives. And because we’re not all in the same place on the plane, we’re not all going to be mapped onto the same places, you know, on the plane as well, whatever the mathematical equation is to our lives. So I think sometimes we’re so obsessed with the outcome. I was, at least in my own personal experience where I went to high school and I was really good at almost anything I put my mind to. And so naturally I got kind of streamlined into a certain field, but I got to get to university and I realized I don’t enjoy any of this. I’m actually not having a good time. I’m not really sure why I’m here. I’m not really sure what I’m doing. And I think that made me enjoy the work less. And I feel if I knew that my ultimate goal is to be an efficient problem solver, I maybe would have enjoyed it more. But I could only find that out through the experience I’m having now of I actually enjoy systemic, systematic thinking. And that’s something I can only inherit from my past and the experiences I have in classes. So I think it can be difficult to make the differentiation. And sometimes when you’re going through the pain or the uncertainty or the work, you’re feeling so tired because you feel like maybe it’s a bit harder for you to get to where other people are. So maybe here, comparison is the thief of joy that sometimes you want your hows to be similar to your neighbor’s hows. I don’t know if there’s any validity in that.

 

Dan Fouts (13:57)

Comparison is the thief of joy. That’s the subject for another podcast. I love that.

 

Steve Fouts (14:02)

Who said that? Who said that?

 

Dan Fouts (14:03)

I love that. Do you know who said that, Thandeka?

 

Thandeka Malaza (14:06)

I’m actually not sure.

 

Dan Fouts (14:08)

Other than you, of course.

 

Thandeka Malaza (14:11)

No, but I definitely got it from somewhere. It’s not an original thought. So I read it somewhere. Definitely.

 

Dan Fouts (14:17)

Yeah. If I could just pick up on that idea, because that’s overwhelming my mind right now. When we compare our lives to other lives, and look at people and make the conclusion that they’ve found their why. Oftentimes that is not accurate. It might seem from the outside that they have, but they really haven’t. And I think that that can get us into trouble in finding our own because it ends up being a distraction. We end up trying to mimic and idealize other people. And we’re really, we have to go inward to find our why not be so distracted with the outward. So that’s the comment I’ll make upon that.

 

Steve Fouts (15:05)

Yeah, that’s a great point. Systematic thinking. There’s the connection, right? Social justice, Thadeka, and mathematics. You know, you can’t explain these things with simple equations. They happen at different time frames. They happen for different people in different ways. And I’m thinking about a counterclaim here. A different way to look at the quote where we really can say something legitimate about the quote and how it’s kind of missed the mark with something. Do you have any thoughts on that?

 

Thandeka Malaza (15:50)

I think that at the end of the day, the test of a statement is conditionality. And the reason why I say this is because, like I said, I have way of thinking about things and in this instance even when I think about it mathematically you look at the outlier in your equation to say perhaps they are a series of different hows but they all have been underlined by the same kind of experiences or values so for instance some people work hard because they believe that hard working has an output but is that a why and if we do say that I can bear almost any how it seems to ignore that sometimes situations can be out of the control of certain individuals. I think that like uniformity and statements have a way of grouping different individuals in society that don’t belong the same bracket, and the reason why I say this is because a lot of what we get to do in our lives also heavily depends on how far past our noses we can see. So if the only place I’ve ever seen in my life is my compound, and I haven’t seen anything else, and you tell me that it’s possible for me to touch the sky, it’s going to take a different level of belief in that philosophy and ideology to actually tap out of my current framework. So I think everything can be true until we have to test the limits of conditionality. And I think that the statement doesn’t quite encompass every single situation. I think that it makes a philosophical reference to existence and perhaps the idea of existentialism also then hinges on where we are and what particular socialization we exist and whether or not we have ceilings to our dreams or not. So I’m not sure if I answered your question there, but I’d say that’s as far as the thought goes in that direction.

 

Steve Fouts (17:56)

You sound like a philosophy major. I mean it, the way you talk around this, this is really, it’s a really good perspective. Conditionality, because that’s how you, in mathematics, prove something wrong. You show a case where it’s not true and all of a sudden you’ve got to start over with what you’re saying so that it encompasses everything. I would say, to pick up on your idea, I would say that externals sometimes are too much and you can have a why, you know, but if you’re in the middle of a hurricane or you have some just tragic things happen to people around you, that some of them are unbearable and it has nothing to do with your own, you know, vision of who you are and how sure you are of where you’re going in your life. They’re just unbearable and you need to come up with another strategy and some more support to get through it. And you, cause you might have to totally reframe yourself and set a new goal or start over. And it’s just because of the external environment.

 

Dan Fouts (19:17)

Picking up on that, Steve, I’m totally aligning with how you’re thinking of that. Nietzsche is an existentialist. He’s very, very focused on the individual and the individual power to overcome challenges, to find meaning at whatever cost. I mean, if you know anything about Nietzsche’s life, he had terrible health problems. He was secluded. He was in solitude. He wrote a lot of his books and you’re the later part of his life. He, and, you know, in the mountains and, and alone from people. And then he had such significant health problems that he was bedridden for the last decade of his life. And so to pick up on what Steve was saying, he who has a why can bear almost any how sometimes the difficulties are so much and that you can have a purpose, but what you really need is to lean on others to help you. You need to have a community, a collectivist community solution to your life, not just an individual exploration of your own meaning. And so that’s what I would say is the counterclaim. It’s not only an individual journey here. It’s a collectivist journey sometimes to find your meaning.

 

Thandeka Malaza (20:41)

I absolutely love that because just to pick up on again, you, Steve and Dan is, there’s a lot of work that goes into existing outside of ourselves. So I realized that you could get through anything insofar as your intelligence will take you, insofar as your grades will take you, insofar as your grit will take you. But you also do need to come back and say, I am actually tired and I don’t know the way out. Because the truth is our human understanding is very limited to our experiences and so because I’ve experienced a series of realities, I have a precedent for believing my current reality. But something transformative happens when I listen to Steve, and Steve has had a different set of realities. So it’s almost as if the world doesn’t just end here, but that my periphery can be widened. And perhaps through this collectivist work, through this community of existence then, I’m able to tap back into my why. And also then perhaps the why stops being so selfish and materialistic. But perhaps then the why becomes more community centered. And perhaps that’s even a better outcome to say, I exist to make the world a better place. And now you can start breaking down what the world being a better place looks like. It sounds very Namaste, but I think I also believe in the philosophy of love and connection and rebuilding that what happens when people wrong us? Is there a pathway to redemption? What happens if I can’t figure out what I want in life? Does that mean I’m useless? What happens when my tree is different from your tree? Does that mean I don’t have a benefit into the ecosystem? So I think interrogating those ideas of difference and difference being okay and my how being very different to your how and finding strength in communities a very important aspect that sometimes individual philosophies can miss whenever they’re describing life situations to say, we don’t have to cope alone. There are options for collectivist work in our individual lives as well.

 

Steve Fouts (23:03)

That is great. We have a quote, I am because you are that we’ve done on our podcast. That idea that our destinies are wrapped up into each other’s destinies. So when it’s coming to that why, I’m gonna build on what you said, Thandeka, hopefully, and I’m gonna say, think about the people that are intent on finding their why. They’re trying to hurry it. And then they think they found it and they did it on their own or they did it in a certain way, maybe they were pressured into it, they convinced themselves, I know who I am. I got my why, I’m done. Of course I’m gonna bear any how. I’m going to make sure that no one gets in the way of what I know is true about me and my why. And truth be told, if that’s a process that involves other people, you might have gotten a realization that is going to hurt you over time because you’re gonna stick to it, but it may not be comprehensive. So I think that this quote, one of the counterclaims to the quote is that there’s a danger here. He who has a why can bear almost any how. Can we ever really find our why? That’s my essential question. I’m gonna go right into the question from the counterclaim. Do we ever really know our why? And how is that gonna affect the way we act on a quote like this?

 

Dan Fouts (24:56)

The one that leaps out at me, and again, we don’t, Thandeka, we don’t necessarily have to answer the essential questions that we come up with, but we just consider them as an outgrowth of our conversation. And the one that comes to mind for me is, how do I know when I found my why?

 

Thandeka Malaza (25:20)

I think that has a lot to do with being in touch. I’ll explain this. So I think even when you think about political frameworks, like how the policies of a country are developed in the frameworks through which we exist under, you think about the benefits, the cost-benefit analysis there to say, my why is an overriding factor. It’s the reason why I get up and I do the things that I do. So if I exist because my why is emancipation for all, for instance, like Malcolm, then you have a reason to get up in the morning and go to whatever project that you’re running. Because for you, the work that you do is directly linked to your why, the reason why you exist. And because we have so many what can I say? Facades in the modern world. Sometimes it can be easy to think you find your why. For instance, I’ve stumbled a couple of whys in my own life to say, are the things that I believe in things that are giving me the output that I desire? So if I want justice for all, do the efforts that I make towards justice for all fit into the bigger picture? Or am I simply interested in the ego? And I think, Steve, you mentioned something along these lines of what happens then if I find my why, but I’m fundamentally unhappy. And I think here what the problem is, is you’ve created a perfect headshot of what your why will give to you. So if your why is rooted in a consumer model, I exist in order to make a billion by 2027, then that’s because you think that a billion dollars is going to make you happy. And when you get to having done and gotten a billion dollars by anyhow, which means sometimes that you’ve stepped on people’s toes, you’ve done the wrong thing, you’ve evaded a couple of labor laws, and you realize you’re unhappy, then maybe you need to go back to your value system. And I think then that sort of answers in part for me how I think we get to determine the why at every point, checking whether it’s this with our value system. And if we don’t have a value system, interrogating why.

 

Dan Fouts (27:45)

That’s so good. That’s so good. It has to align with our character and values. That’s how we know when we found it. And when it departs from those, that’s a sign that it’s not our true why. And we need to re-figure things.

 

Steve Fouts (28:04)

That’s really, really good. Because there are a lot of persevering people. Who have grit and get up at 5 a.m. And are focused and are driven people who are completely misguided on some level. They have their why quote unquote, but they don’t realize that when they achieve it, they’re going to wonder why is this happiness so elusive? Why did I spend all this time doing this? Who really am I? Those are the bigger questions. And maybe you can’t ever realize any of that until you go through the process and you realize that you really didn’t define your why. You really didn’t know who you were. Whereas other people are really keyed into that and they’re in a peaceful place where they really can bear anyhow. just like the driven misguided people, but they are achieving the state that they know is good for them. And it’s going to be something that they can share with others.

 

Thandeka Malaza (29:33)

The aspect of sharing with others, I think is a beautiful way to end what you just said, because like you said, the misguided part is unfortunately sometimes not in our control. We all grow up in different environments. And I think the first part is accepting that. It’s accepting that we are not who we’ve made ourselves to be, up until a certain point, of course. So you have the primary socialization and sometimes the things that you desire are influenced by what other people have said around you. So if success to everyone around you looks like the billion dollars, then you sort of start convincing yourself that that’s what you want. But maybe it’s not such a bad thing that you try and you fail because only then are you able to, like you’re saying, come apart and realize that maybe it’s not all about this and to achieve peace, it’s about more than more than what I’ve what I’ve done so far.

 

Dan Fouts (30:31)

And to just put this idea in back to the counterclaim, he who has a why can bear almost any how Nietzsche seems to say this and sets up life as this struggle. But if we define our whys in wiser ways, like love of others, love of family, connection with our community, then maybe life doesn’t have to be so hard in finding our why. Maybe it will come easier for us and we’ll live a life of contentment and happiness. And we avoid struggle in that sense. That was my thought.

 

Steve Fouts (31:14)

That’s interesting. Just pursuing a why is misguided maybe on some level. Acceptance is what you need first. You need a humility. You already have a role. You just haven’t figured it out. You haven’t been honest with yourself to appreciate it. It’s a different way of thinking of finding your calling.

 

Dan Fouts (31:42)

Right, I wasn’t saying you don’t have a why, I’m saying the why is right in front of you. You’re not seeing what’s right in front of you.

 

Steve Fouts (31:51)

Okay. Yeah.

 

Thandeka Malaza (31:53)

And that is very true. It’s difficult sometimes to see and it can be very limiting if of course you’re living in your own world again. Like you’re saying, sometimes you do have a role, you just haven’t figured it out. And by showing up every day, you sort of figure it out because it sort of defines itself then. And you don’t have to hack your head trying to think, how do I make the world a better place? But by showing up, you’re actively contributing to making the world a better place. And even if you are failing in some aspects, but you can then only improve through practice. If you sit in your bed all day and you just idealize and philosophize and theorize, you’re getting to conclusions that are based heavily on your isolation and individualism, but if you go out and live with people, you might find that they’re cures for these causes.

 

Dan Fouts (32:46)

You said it so much better than I did, Thandeka. That was really beautiful.

 

Steve Fouts (32:51)

I really like the way you put it. I’m thinking of a specific person that I know that is one of the most present. When I say present, I mean that in, let’s put quotes around it. When they’re around you, They’re keyed into what you’re thinking and saying and doing and the experience with you. They’re the best listener, most non-judgmental person in the world. And they’re extremely unfulfilled on a professional and a personal level and always feel that they don’t have the capacity that they need to have in order to succeed, achieve. And I look at this person and the disconnect is that their why is active and is affecting people in a good way in their life, but they’re not conscious of it. They have an internal deficit in not seeing it. So I think that that dichotomy is in a lot of people. I don’t know if both of you share that. And maybe that’s another conversation we can get into, but it’s something I wanted to bring up.

 

Dan Fouts (34:11)

Yes. And for many, it takes other people to come into their life and help them acknowledge and uncover what their skills and talents and gifts that they have. You can’t do it alone. You have to have other people recognize it and nurture that within you.

 

Thandeka Malaza (34:39)

I love that. I also love the question because I think again, this is sort of what happens when you form a connection is sometimes you are in a really dark place or you feel like this is where my life ends and I don’t have any sort of value outside of this. But you show up and someone says, this is the best day of my life. You being here, you listening to me, you giving me the time has changed my life in a positive way. And sometimes you’re struggling to see that, but like you said, that’s because of an internal deficit. And I think this is something that a lot of people refer to in modern day psychology exchanges as the shadow. These are the parts, what can I say, that you struggle to deal with. Perhaps you have shame about being such a good listener. Perhaps you have felt as though it’s landed you in terrible positions and you can’t benefit from the people around you. So I think that somehow pain has a way of shaping narratives and limiting our experiences because we’re running away from connections because of what they reveal in us. It can be difficult for us to be able to acknowledge the good we bring to the table simply because we’re so hung up on being a certain kind of person. So I think that’s actually a good thing to explore is how do we feel? I think I’ve also struggled with the same thing, to be quite honest, but I think the way that I then sort of grow out of that a little bit, bit by bit, is by removing this need to be productive. So removing the need to, whenever I am in connection, to constantly be an active listener and sometimes letting myself be listened to. So I think there has to be some sort of vulnerability. And I think we keep searching back to this idea of acceptance. That perhaps you need to accept that maybe, because you’re so active as a listener, you desire the same thing, but you’re afraid to practice it in real life connections, because what happens if you don’t get it? So I guess again, it’s a quest of bravery and courage and doing the things that are a bit uncomfortable.

 

Steve Fouts (36:58)

Yeah.

 

Dan Fouts (36:59)

Well, I don’t want this conversation to end. I think it’s so fruitful. There’s a lot of different

ways we could take this, but this has been really, really good. We started with this Nietzsche quote, he who has a why can bear almost any how. And we’ve really worked through the claim and the counterclaim and these essential questions have gotten us into a lot of areas of human.

behavior and acceptance and trust and community and individuality. Thandeka, what we like about this method that we’ve experienced today is that it leads to other conversations, right? We want to go out to our communities and share this kind of thinking now with others. And I think that this has been just incredibly rewarding. So we wanna just thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast and we wish you the absolute best in all of your endeavors.

 

Thandeka Malaza (38:10)

Thank you so much, Dan. I had a beautiful time here today. I think one of my favorite things is just how the conversation was fluttering between the three of us. And I think there’s something beautiful about being an active listener and then also being listened to. And I think the Teach Different podcasts offered me a beautiful opportunity to explore this thought and idea. So I hope the podcast continues to change lives and teaches across, you know, classrooms and continents and people. So thank you so much for having me as well.

 

Dan Fouts (38:45)

And would you like to share your podcast, Thandeka?

 

Thandeka Malaza (38:49)

Yes, thank you so much. So I’m the host of the Tea with Tee podcast, which is also produced by Siyethemba Dlamini and I focus on social cultural issues. I love to explore the human condition and what we can do to connect better as human beings. It’s available on Spotify and Apple podcasts.

 

Steve Fouts (39:09)

T with T, is that T-E-A with T, the letter?

 

Thandeka Malaza (39:14)

So it’s T-E-A with T-E-E.

 

Dan Fouts (39:18)

Love it.

 

Thandeka Malaza (39:19)

So T with T.

 

Dan Fouts (39:20)

I’m downloading that today. Thank you so much.