We Play A Solo Tug-Of-War

For many of us, the finite side, the reality and necessity of life, is all there is: a world that Kierkegaard calls “aesthetic.” The problem is that if we live only for our needs and whims, then life will rattle by without anything bigger. When we live only for the aesth...

Both sides have their sirens’ calls that beckon us with promises of comfort, and both risk rendering us unable to move forward authentically in our lives. For the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, the wise but hard task of life is to walk the path between thes...

In terms of making meaningful and authentic decisions, we are a species walking a narrow bridge with two chasms framing our way: the finite and the infinite. On the finite side lie the fixed conditions of everything we are. These are the facts of our existence that force us to li...

Kierkegaard believed that the finite is not all there is to being human. There is also the infinite — the recognition that we have the capacity to choose and direct our lives in essentially any way we can dream. But spending too much time gawping at the cosmos of possibilities we...

Most of us can remember the anxious vertigo that comes in those “infinite” moments of life, when you leave your parents’ home, end a relationship, or stare at the blank first page of a novel. To know the infinite is also to be dreadfully aware of the vastness of the future. In a phrase Ki...

Kierkegaard’s advice is that we must each “learn to be anxious.” We must take a stand where we will but get used to facing outward. We must take a step along that narrow bridge between the infinite and finite. After all, like a spinning top, we risk toppling and losing our very selves when we sto...