He who cannot find the way to his ideal, lives more frivolously and shamelessly than the man without an ideal.

Aphorism 133 of Beyond Good and Evil gives Friedrich Nietzsche's ideals a difficult test. Possessing an ideal is not enough; failing to find a way toward it can produce a life less serious than one without the ideal. The provocation turns attention from an impressive destination to the conduct of the person who claims to be traveling there.

One way to read the sentence is as a warning about using aspiration as an alibi. A splendid future self can excuse a remarkably careless present self if the connection between them is never examined. What would the first workable step look like? What habit would have to change? Nietzsche's judgment is intentionally harsher than a gentle motivational slogan. Its value lies in making the gap uncomfortable enough to notice, without pretending that naming the gap has already closed it.

The tabby looking up a short staircase gives the ideal an unusually practical architecture. There is a direction, but there are also actual steps. The cat is not pursuing a theory of human excellence, and the picture is more playful than the aphorism. Still, it makes the useful question clear: a destination can inspire you, but at some point there must be somewhere for the next foot to go.