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Mind and feeling

Søren Kierkegaard

Choosing

Søren Kierkegaard (Denmark · 1813–1855) — Choosing.

Mind and feelingThe industrial ageChoosing

What actually happened?

In October 1841, aged twenty-eight, Kierkegaard returned the engagement ring to Regine Olsen, a little over a year after they had become engaged. He never married. Two years later Either/Or appeared without his name on it: the editor was a made-up Victor Eremita, whose preface says he found the papers in a hidden drawer of an old writing desk.

The one choosing is you

Either/Or sets two ways of living side by side and does not announce a winner. The reader has to do the choosing, which is the point: no one else can do it in your place.

A friend lays out both options and says 'I would take the first', and you still have to be the one who signs.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom

In The Concept of Anxiety he says the dizziness comes from looking down into your own possibilities. The more you could do, the more it swims. He does not treat it as a fault; he treats it as what freedom feels like.

Standing in front of twelve career paths, you feel sick, and the sickness is a sign the choice is real.

Understood backwards, lived forwards

His journal says life can only be understood looking back, yet has to be lived looking ahead. So the clarity you are waiting for will not arrive before the decision; it arrives after.

Only on leaving a job do you see which of the early signs mattered.

Different names, one reader

He published under pseudonyms so that readers could not borrow his authority. If the voice is invented, you cannot say 'the author agrees with me'; you have to argue with the position itself.

A manager who writes the case against his own plan, and has someone else sign it.

How do I use it today?

Pick one small thing where you do not want to let either side go. Give yourself ten minutes, cross out the column that says 'afraid of regret', and write only which one you are more willing to answer for. Then do it, and do not reopen the other column.

Deep read

Regret Comes Either WayYou cannot choose by regret, because it turns up whichever you pickMarry and you will regret it, do not marry and you will regret that too: the question is taken from both sides at onceWaiting Until You UnderstandLife is understood looking back, but it can only be lived looking aheadHe wrote in his journal that people forget the other half: life has to be lived forwards

Read alongside

Steve JobsBoth face two good things. Jobs says cut one and accept the loss; Kierkegaard says whichever you cut will hurt, and the hurt is not evidence you cut the wrong one. Herbert SimonBoth are about choices that will not settle. Simon puts a stopping rule on the search, good enough and go; Kierkegaard says the search will not stop because we dread regret, and regret comes from both sides.

Further

Steve Jobs Herbert Simon Viktor Frankl

Lines to keep

Regret cannot rank two choices; do not ask it to.