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You ever read "The Sickness Unto Death," by Jean Paul Sartre?
I have not.
It's been a few years, but I remember him describing a sickness (he calls it despair) that people suffer from. The sickness is the belief that "I would be different if only..."
The rest of the sentence goes like this:
...I had that job.
...I lived in that place.
...I had that woman.
...that man loved me.
...I could stop doing such and such.
...I could just do such and such.
You get the idea. The despair had everything to do with who we would be if only...
To give up all of that is both easier and more difficult than anything else on this earth.
Sorry...it wasn't Sartre's book, it was Soren Kierkegaard's.
May they both roll back over in their graves.
Found it online here. I'm reading it.
This is the part I was referring to:
...The next step is the declared despair, despair over oneself. A young girl is in despair over love, and so she despairs over her lover, because he died, or because he was unfaithful to her. This is not a declared despair; no, she is in despair over herself. This self of hers, which, if it had become "his" beloved, she would have been rid of in the most blissful way, or would have lost, this self is now a torment to her when it has to be a self without "him"; this self which would have been to her riches (though in another sense equally in despair) has now become to her a loathsome void, since "he" is dead, or it has become to her an abhorrence, since it reminds her of the fact that she was betrayed. Try it now, say to such a girl, "Thou art consuming thyself," and thou shalt hear her reply, "Oh, no, the torment is precisely this, that I cannot do it."
Chapter 1, The Sickness Unto Death
Yes, I have read that today. And much more. Great stuff. But then again, familiar. As I read it today I had an eerie thought. What if I am the second coming of Kierkegaard?
I am very interested in the likes of:
But in spite of the fact that a man has become fantastic in this fashion, he may nevertheless be perfectly well able to live on, to be a man, as it seems, to occupy himself with temporal things, get married, beget children, win honor and esteem—and perhaps no one notices that in a deeper sense he lacks a self. About such a thing as that not much fuss is made in the world; for a self is the thing the world is least apt to inquire about, and the thing of all things the most dangerous for a man to let people notice that he has it. The greatest danger, that of losing one’s own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed.
For this is where I lived for so long, and what is my constant temptation--to be well received, to be a regular guy, a friendly chap, a wise man, to gain.
Most of the trouble I've been in, the really juicy trouble, has been because of me--not because of my choices, not because of my sins, but because of my self.
I could get along fine without myself. But what profit would it really be to win the world over and to lose my own self?
Selves leave a mark. Efforts create entanglements.
Selves are tantalizing. Personalities are repulsive.
Selves are vulnerable. "Character" is impenetrable.
"Not I, but Christ living in me."
Selves are Christ. Hide the self--hide Christ.
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