We are indeed of the opinion that we are the ones who entirely direct our being and dispose over it. In a certain sense this is true, yet in a certain sense it is equally untrue, for we have neither bestowed such beyng upon ourselves, nor can we take away such beyng from ourselves. Even in the freest act of suicide—assuming we are able to know what ‘free’ is supposed to mean here—we can indeed take away such beyng from ourselves, yet we can never take it from ourselves and thereby, as it were, rid ourselves of beyng, because with this annihilation of beyng we annihilate ourselves, so that precisely he is lacking who could now ‘be’ (!) rid of his beyng. Precisely here the unique relationship of the human being, as a being, shows itself as a relationship to the being of this being.
Our being is one into which, as we say, we are thrown, without knowing the trajectory of this throw, and without, proximally and for the most part, our explicitly taking up this thrownness into our Dasein, because we have unknowingly always already avoided it for all sorts of reasons. Yet in one way or another, we must take responsibility for the being [Sein] to which we are delivered over. That is to say: Our being is not only thrownness, it is at the same time projection: a projection in which, in one way or another, the trajectory of the throw of our thrownness opens itself up or closes itself off and becomes contorted, and does so as a mission or mandate. That beyng that exceeds the human—in accordance with which a human being is not just simply a human being—will therefore be such as to take up, in a supreme way, being as something that has come over it: to truly suffer it—in a suffering that is quite remote from all wretchedness and from every mere dejected putting up with. In that suffering [Leiden] is the origin of what we must truly comprehend as passion [Leiden‑schaft]. Such being, which by its essence is a suffering of itself, can therefore also only appropriately be experienced by someone who is capable of such suffering—that is, is capable of being equal to the magnitude of a need. This suffering, in which beyng becomes manifest as destiny, is not, however, a mere capability to simply receive, as it were, a destiny that lies before it. Rather, this suffering is creative. It discloses and unfolds the need.
Only in such suffering can a destiny take hold of us, a destiny that never simply lies present before us, but that is a sending—that is, is sent to us—and in such a way that it sends us toward our vocation, granted that we ourselves truly send ourselves into it, and know of what is fittingly sent, and, in knowing it, will it. The concept and word for ‘fittingly sent or destined’ [das Schickliche], frequently used by Hölderlin, holds an essential meaning for him, and an intrinsic relation precisely to the renewal and transformation of human being, in the