And the clue to the whole poem of Parmenides) lies already in the first line ((The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach rode on…).
The one crucial factor in this strange affair that for Parmenides influences everything—that determines just how far on this journey he can actually go—is longing.
The Greek word he uses is thumos, and thumos means the energy of life itself. It’s the raw presence in us that senses and feels; the massed power of our emotional being. Above all it’s the energy of passion, appetite, yearning, longing.
Since the time of Parmenides we have learned so well to hedge it in, dominate it, punish and control it. But with him it’s what comes first, right at the beginning. And there is a profound significance in this, because what he is saying is that— left to itself—longing makes it possible for us to go all the way to where we really need to go.
There is no reasoning with passion and longing, although we like to deceive ourselves by believing there is. All we ever do is reason with ourselves about the form our longing will take. We reason that if we find a better job we will be content, but we never are. We reason that if we go somewhere special we will be happy; but when we get there we start wanting to go somewhere else. We reason that if we were to sleep with the lover of our dreams we would be fulfilled. And yet even if we were to manage that, it would still not be enough.
What we call human nature means being pulled by the nose in a hundred different directions and ending up going nowhere very fast.
But although there is no reasoning with our passion, it has a tremendous intelligence of its own. The only trouble is that we keep interfering; keep breaking it up into tiny pieces, scattering it everywhere. Our minds always trick us into focusing on the little things we think we want—rather than on the energy of wanting itself.
If we can bear to face our longing instead of finding endless ways to keep satisfying it and trying to escape it, it begins to show us a glimpse of what lies behind the scenes. It opens up a devastating perspective where everything is turned on its head: where fulfilment becomes a limitation, accomplishment turns into a trap. And it does this with an intensity that scrambles our thoughts and forces us straight into the present.