Mila's logs

I was out of breath that day, climbing up six floors’ worth of stairs with uneven breaths. There is a very fortunate thing about being a university student, and it is that guidance is always offered to all that seek it out. This is why I’m often found on this floor, knocking on the doors of people who have more answers than my endless contemplations do.

Sometimes, it feels unreal that I’m living the life I am now, just because of how different it all used to be. I sit on the low, plush couch with my hands reaching into my bag to grab the frail binding of the paperback book. I’m here to discuss Sartre and Nietzsche’s philosophies in contrast to Buddhist and Confucian thought. It feels not long ago that I was in high school spewing disdain to my friends for being called to the shokuinshitsu (faculty room) for the billionth time that week. Now I’m here. I’ve been looking forward to it for days.

A book—a grey book, with the letters Kierkegaard is handed to me. I take it, opening the fluttering pages to spot the introduction. It’s not the first time I’ve read Kierkegaard; in fact, I used his quote on the very final paper that this professor had assigned me a year ago.

“On the whole, the longing for solitude is a sign that there still is spirit in a person and is the measure of what spirit there is.” (The Sickness unto Death, Søren Kierkegaard)

This quote is one I reuse often, as you can see in my Personal essay #01. Kierkegaard is a theologist, tackling existentialism from a Christian perspective. And to put it simply, the way he does so is eloquent. The sickness unto death is despair, and the solution to despair is to establish a personal relationship with God. To continue to despair is to sin—as it ignores the salvation that belief in God would bestow. To non-Christians, this may sound strange; perhaps even unhelpful.

But even from a non-Christian perspective, this work provides a great deal of thought into existentialism borne from self-limitation of the human spirit. Kierkegaard proposes God as the ultimate solution to human despair, but reading this, I don’t believe many people will up and turn to praying to escape their despair. As the quote above indicates, the human spirit is prone to limiting itself; constraining its own freedom to become happy. While there is something very simple such as a God to turn to, humans are still in despair.

Is it because of the uncertainty that there is no guarantee for salvation even with devotion? Is the notion of belief so silly that we cannot fathom relying on God as a solution to human despair? What if that skepticism and distrust is a conscious decision to continue down the path of despair because in some part of our heads, we believe that there must be a true solution? Is it not true then, that despair comes from within us, and the continuation of despair is in some way, enabled by our own minds?