Aristocratic silence, part 2

Over a year ago, I wrote this post in which I explained a dynamic that has endured throughout my whole marriage with Wife, and which (I now come to realize) has not been serving me one little bit.  It's hard to summarize, so I encourage you to follow the link and remind yourself what it was about.

But tonight I was thumbing through Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra -- a book I haven't looked at in ever so long -- and I think I may see why I adopted this "aristocratic silence" strategy in the first place ... this willingness to be unjustly accused rather than to defend myself with the truth.  I realize also that Nietzsche foresaw exactly how this strategy can go wrong, and warned against it. 

He also managed to explain in 26 words what it took me a post of 1478 words to spell out, which makes my writing something like 57 times as ponderous and verbose as Nietzsche's.  The man really wrote well.

Our text for this lesson comes from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part one, essay nineteen, "On the Adder's Bite":

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right -- especially when one is right. Only one must be rich enough for that.

Damn, I wish I had understood that when I first read it!