Synonyms of Patience

"Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown."

-Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Kierkegaard was nothing short of a physical representation of anxiety. Reading his philosophy causes me to feel anxious, yet that is the beauty of it, to be in touch with the difficult concepts that I wrestle with inside my head. Concepts like faith, God, nihilism, absurdity, authenticity, despair, the search for meaning, and individualism.

Yeah. That is a big, often terrifying batch of wonder to explore. However, I start to feel like Kierkegaard looks in my accompanying pencil sketch when I read his scribblings. Writing that is angry, glaring, purposeful, steely-eyed literary angst personified.

Why then, do I read him? I suppose, for balance, to counter the darkness that Kierkegaard’s words and thoughts paint across my brain. 

Oh, did I mention Nietzsche? There is another terrifying philosopher I study to keep myself off-balance. I expose myself to these types of writings and writers to help steady my understanding of a world that is seemingly plummeting and tumbling in a trajectory toward existential destruction and dread, carrying with it, the people heavily weighted down with all the problems of a modern life. At least that is how I understand other influential thinkers post-Kierkegaard such as Sartre, Camus, and Beauvoir when they interpret the human condition in their respective philosophies.

Looking for meaning oftentimes actually feels the opposite to me, in a sense that I end up losing some meaning in the search. I can be left with only finding that ideas and perspectives I am exploring more deeply, end up having their meaning sucked out of them, and what should be rational and reasonable concepts end up as just additional confusing paradoxes. 

And this is where exercising patience does its magic. Doing the difficult sitting with uncertainty about concepts such as “meaning.”

For me, it all really boils down to the particular need to try and really know myself. Sometimes the answers come and sometimes they don't. Often times I am asking more and deeper questions. And this pursuit for me is building strengths and tearing down resistance as a thinking human being…a process I am trying to be more comfortable and patient with.