The idea of the shipwrecked

2010-11-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)

Its quite an ambitious claim that 'to live is to feel oneself lost' is the simple truth. It is a claim that evokes opposition from those who want their lives to be more than posturing and farce. Many of us spend so much energy avoiding being lost, and struggling against quicksand to justify and work hard enough to be fulfilled. I am an example of a person who teeters in between sincerity and posturing, and I will likely remain there for the rest of my life. But I am fortunate to have glimpses of genuine clarity and it is for these moments and the inspiration that comes from them that I can be positive.

Literature and philosophy have been my conduit to sincerity. When I am able, I focus my energy through my imagination into characters and their stories. I want to be able to fabricate the kinds of stories that deliver the existential experience back to me in the same way that I get it from other writers' work. My work, my stories and theories, are the path by which I arrive at beauty, and it is the anchor of genuine ideas that sustain me. Because the ideas of the shipwrecked are genuine not because they have any special content, but because the shipwrecked man creates them in personal perfection. They become the truth for which the shipwrecked man is willing to live or die.

The most significant obstacle I've encountered in my writing is my fear that I am not being sincere in my work. I fear that the reason clarity and great work sometimes escape me is because I am incapable of appreciating life to the degree Kierkegaard implies is necessary not to be just rhetoric and posturing. At these times I remind myself that life is inescapably lived. That I am living and feeling lost at those very times when I doubt myself and struggle with my hopes and expectations. I've come to find that the less effort I apply to ensuring that I am meeting my most unreal expectations the better able I am to be in the moment, truly lost; so I instead try to live with action not expectation.

Genuine ideas

The idea of the shipwrecked