a puzzzle in nietzsche

From the preface to the second edition,* Section 2: "Just like a traveller who resolves to wake up at a certain hour and then calmly givers himself up to sleep, so too we philosophers, should we become ill, temporarily surrender ourselves with body and soul to the illness -- we shit our eyes to ourselves, as it were. And as the traveller knows that something is not asleep, something that will count the hours and wake him up, we, too, know that the decisive moment will find us awake, that something will then leap forward and catch the mind in the act..."

from Book One, Section 54, "The consciousness of appearance": "...I suddenly awoke in the middle of this dream, but only to the consciousness that I am dreaming and that I must go on dreaming lest I perish... To me, appearance is the active and living itself, which goes so far in its self-mockery that it makes me feel that here there is appearance and a will-o'-the-wisp and a dance of spirits and nothing else -- that among all these dreamers, even I, the 'knower', am dancing my dance..."

from Book Two, Section 107, "Our ultimate gratitude to art": "And precisely because we are at bottom grave and serious human beings and more weights than human beings, nothing does us as much good as the fool's cap: we need it against ourselves -- we need all exuberant, floating, dancing, mocking, childish, and blissful art lest we lose that freedom over things that our ideal demands of us. It would be a relapse for us, with our irritable honesty, to get completely caught up in morality and, for the sake of the overly severe demands that we make on ourselves, to become virtuous monsters and scarecrows. We have also to be able to stand above morality -- and not just to stand with the anxious stiffness of someone who is afraid of slipping and falling at any moment, but also to float and play above it!"

from Book Four ("St. Januarius"), Section 279, "Star Friendship": "We were friends and have become estranged. But that was right, and we do not want to hide and obscure it from ourselves as if we had to be ashamed of it. We are two ships, each of which has its own goal and course; we may cross and have a feast together, as we did -- and then the good ships lay so quietly in one harbour and in one sun that it may have seemed as if they had already completed their course and had the same goal. But then the almighty force of our projects drove us apart once again, into different seas and sunny zones, and maybe we will never meet again -- or maybe we will, but will not recognize each other: the different seas and suns have changed us! That we had to become estranged is the law above us; through it we should come to have more respect for each other -- and the thought of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous invisible curve and stellar orbit in which our different ways and goals may be included as small stretches -- let us rise to this thought! But our life is too short and our vision too meagre for us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility. -- Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we must be earth enemies."

I interviewed a student recently; at the end of the interview, I asked them: "If you were a storm, what kind of storm would you be?" They responded that they would be a hurricane. At first, when a hurricane hits, it's tremendously stormy and active etc. But then you reach the eye, and everything is calm. The student saw something of themself in this: for a while, they just want to talk about everything to everyone, and ideas are just pouring out of their head and mouth etc etc etc. And then they switch, and all they want to do is listen and hear what other people think, and not really develop their own conclusions at all. And then, some time later, they'll got back. Etc.

Anyways, all of these passages cited, and to some extent the student's answer, exemplify an idea I've been trying to figure out for a while now: how I can do something in all seriousness, and yet not. (Part of the problem is that I can't even get a good statement of the problem). Basically - what is it to act on my ideals even admitting that they are very subject to revision - and what distinguishes this from just acting on my ideals? From acting on them and holding that they are not subject to revision? Do these things 'look' exactly the same, or are there substantive consequences (i.e. Kantian ethics?) from being able to take a step back from oneself? How exactly does all this work?

* citation here

(This is just a side-note, but I've discussed how I have a really hard time reading some philosophers, and find them nearly unintelligible. I actually, for reasons that are unclear to me, find (feel that) Nietzsche is very clear - which is odd, considering that it is usually Continentals that I find unintelligible.)