Kierkegaard and the struggle to be oneself
Notes on giants - Number 3
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🏷️ Categories: Writing, Life lessons, Creativity
Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher who lived in the 19th century and has gone down in history as one of the most influential existentialist thinkers.
His philosophical and literary legacy is immense, and his influence lives on today.
For Kierkegaard, our freedom to act defines our lives, but that freedom carries with it enormous weight and responsibility. He believed that we live in a constant search for the meaning of life, always questioning our place in the world and wondering whether the choices we make are the right ones. This is what living is like: a journey marked by self-discovery and uncertainty.
When you have youth, you have no wisdom.
When you have wisdom, you have no youth.
Such is life.
Fortunately, Kierkegaard kept a diary. I have to confess, I am a lover of diaries because I feel they are windows to the soul, they show us the purest version of the writer: intimate thoughts, honest opinions... In his case, these pages reveal inspiring reflections on the meaning of life, non-conformism, creativity, the importance of being true to oneself, how to deal with criticism, and the difficulty of creating a profound artistic work in a superficial world.
Reading her diary was a personal challenge for me. It led me to question my own life and values: why do I write, who do I aspire to be, what is my attitude towards the world?
Her words will inspire you and make you question your life.
Let's navigate through the mind of this giant.
Creating to escape from reality
Art elevates us to another dimension, it is an escape from the mundane.
Kierkegaard, like many artists, shared this belief. For him, creativity represented a way to detach from the earthly and find inner peace. In his diary, he describes how creative work is his refuge from adversity:
‘Only when I write do I feel good. Then I forget all the tribulations of life, all its sufferings. If I stop writing for a few days, I immediately feel overwhelmed and troubled; my head feels heavy and burdened’.
This passage reminds me deeply of what Kafka felt when he wasn't writing.
It seems to be common among artists. Art allows us to create a safe and welcoming space where we can let ourselves go freely, process emotions, channel concerns, and sometimes escape from reality.
Kierkegaard was deeply convinced of this: he wrote because he felt an irrepressible impulse arising from the depths of his being. However, he lived in a time of transformation. During the 19th century, writing was becoming a commercial activity. There were those who wrote only to sell copies.
Kierkegaard was not one of them.
Kierkegaard was firm in his conviction that writing should be born out of an inner motivation and not out of a desire to please others or to earn income:
‘In our time, writing has become a poor thing; people write about subjects they have never really thought about, let alone experienced.
‘I will write as I want, and so be it; others can do as they please: stop buying, stop reading me, or stop reviewing my work.’
‘I need the charm of creative work to forget the pettiness of life.’
This need to create was not optional, but an essential part of his life:
‘Being an author is not something you choose.’
I can't get that sentence out of my head.
Why do you write? Do you do it for yourself? If you write for yourself, why do you publish it?
There are many questions that arise...
The price of authenticity
Kierkegaard despised conformity and inauthenticity.
He often observed how people, instead of seeking their own path, succumbed to social pressure and conformed to other people's expectations:
‘I really thought I understood something about human beings; but the longer I live, the more I realise that we don't understand each other at all.’
The fear of not fitting in or of being rejected often paralyses us.
We give up our authenticity to avoid criticism and isolation. Yet this sacrifice condemns us to an existence void of originality. Kierkegaard believed so.
‘Fundamentally, the world always remains just as wise, that is, just as stupid. When someone has been misunderstood, ridiculed and despised in his time, the next generation discovers that he was great and admires him.’
We fear rejection, but history is full of people whose works, at first rejected or ignored, have later come to be admired and applauded.
Kierkegaard knew only too well the price to be paid for being oneself:
‘It is hard and depressing that, as a result of all this effort, one becomes the target of the petty jealousy of the aristocracy and the mockery of the populace.’
In the magazine ‘Corsaren’, a popular magazine of his time, they wrote a literary review of one of his philosophical essays. Kierkegaard came out in defence of his work and responded to the criticism by writing an article in the same magazine. His article generated a controversy that angered the editor of ‘Corsaren’.
Kierkegaard responded by saying that he did not care whether he was insulted or criticised.
‘I abhor the literary critic as much as the itinerant barber who runs after me with his shaving basin used by other customers’.
‘I know my work quite well and I see it in order, but it hurt me’.
That is his confession after the numerous taunts he was subjected to. In fact, he tells in his diary how he was even harassed in the streets of Denmark...
To be indifferent to criticism or to defend oneself against it?
Another big question to ask oneself...
I end with a tremendous passage:
‘Now everyone feels obliged to read what appears in a newspaper or pamphlet, but they are ashamed to have read a great book to the end.’
He lamented that people preferred superficial content to books of value.
This was written in the 19th century.
It is shocking that we are still in exactly the same struggle between banal content and reading works that really have the power to transform us. Most of us prefer the easy, the comfortable, the quick, the effortless. I identify with Kierkegaard's words, a full life cannot be achieved without the constant challenge to question, to reflect and, of course, to read.
In such a superficial world, reading something thought-provoking is an act of rebellion.
✍️ It's your turn: Why do you choose what you choose to read? Is it to escape reality or to face it and understand it better? What does it mean to live authentically for you?
💭 Quote of the day: ‘Life can only be understood by looking backwards; but it must be lived by looking forwards’. Søren Kierkegaard.
See you next time, take care! 👋
References 📚
Kierkegaard, S. (1960). The Diary of Soren Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard, S. (2014). The quotable Kierkegaard.
In some ways this sounds all very much like Socrates, who, if memory serves argued that an unexamined life is not worth living.