and we have reached the Kierkegaardian portion of the
program…
I am reading, or I should more correctly say, I am rereading
Kierkegaard… at one point in time, I read anything by K.
I could get my hands on, of course that was 30 years and I
don’t recall much of it now…….
we know historically that K. was one of the precursors of
existentialism…but what did K. bring to the table that
allowed him to become one of the key fathers of existentialism?
His entire premise was around the basic idea of choice…
what kind of choices are we going to make?
For K. the only real choice was to be a Christian…
but the vapid, tasteless, lifeless modern choice of Christianity was
not to his liking, not at all…
the modern person says he is a Christian with all the passion of
saying, he likes beans and with all the intensity of someone announcing
they like beans… when all you did was simply to ape your parents and
simply continued their bland version of Christianity……
with no though or understanding of what it meant to be Christian…
to K. that was not real faith, real belief in Christianity because
the modern church striped faith of all its passion and fervor and intensity…
you can choose god with all the intensity of picking out some apples
at the store… red apples sound good, no, green apples seem to be
bobby’s favorite this week, maybe I’ll buy bobby some green apples
so he will have something healthy to eat… and that is the same passion
we use to choose Christianity and god……… the biblical anguish and passion
and fire of Job or Abraham is missing……
and that is what K. is fighting… making the choice of Christianity
to actually mean something… to become a real choice… not just
to become Christian because it is what everyone else is just as indifferently
doing… and that is the lesson of K.
to create choices with some passion and fire about the choices
we make…
we are temporary, finite beings… we exists for only a while and then
we are gone… there is not a decision that we make that goes with us
beyond death…every moment has the same impact as every other moment…
but we can create meaning and importance in moments by our choices…
the Japanese tea ceremony is an excellent example of infusing a moment
with meaning and purpose…and an example of how we can infuse our own
moments with meaning and purpose… by infusing our choices with intensity
and fire and excitement and fury……. the choices we make need to become
something more then a simple choice between red apples and green apples…
that is the message of K… making our choices with fire and passion and
intensity……
too often, much too often we simply follow the path of least resistance
and we take the path right before us… and that is how we wind up
miserable and unhappy and alienated and disconnected from society
and ourselves…… because we didn’t make our life choices with
fire and intensity…for the most part, our life choices are made
by simple fallowing the path, the course already laid out before us…
we become Christian because it was the path before us and we
cheer America on because it was the path laid out before us
and we vote Democratic because it was the path laid out before
us and we work our crummy 9 to 5 job because it was the
path laid out before us… and we made these choice, or should
I say more correctly, we simply took the next step without
any understanding or feeling about it… we began our jobs
in corporate America without understanding what it
means to sell your soul to the devil……
our life choices are made with no more passion then
picking out apples…and with no more consideration…
we might buy red apples because that is what our mother
bought… and for no other reason…….
the argument might be made that we cannot value or
have the time to engage with our every decision because
we must make so many decisions every single day…
but most decisions we make are trivial decisions…
what is for lunch? what channel shall I watch?
which baseball game am I watching? and most of the time,
we sleepwalk through those decisions too… but the important
decisions, the really meaningful decisions,
we barely engage in the really big decisions…
“What am I to do?” “what values should I hold?” “What should I believe in?”
we don’t give these life’s meaning and purpose questions any more thought then
we give to choosing a apple in the store……
K. didn’t say this, but I will, begin to give our choices all the passion
and intensity of every choice being the most important choice in life…
but Kropotkin, we can’t… we have hundreds of choices a day… and that is where
we begin… instead of making hundreds of choices, make two but make those two
choices with passion and intensity and fire… stop making quantity choices
and begin to make quality choices… make one decision a day, but make that
decision a powerful one, make that one choice a meaningful and purposeful choice
and approach all your decisions/choices with meaning and passion and fire
and purpose…
Kropotkin