Welcome to The PATH (Monday Meditation) — A weekly reflection with three timeless insights for daily life. This week’s reflection searches for ancient lessons on thinking like an existentialist (Courage, Freedom, and Being).
1. Courage (and Being)
“We must be ourselves; we must decide where to go,” observed the theologian and existential philosopher Paul Tillich (1886–1965).
One could ask, “If I’m not deciding where to go, who is?”
Well, a theme of existentialism is the notion of becoming who you are (suggesting this is not always the case). As the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard highlighted,
“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
In the classic book, The Courage to Be, Tillich stresses,
Courage is an ethical reality, but it is rooted in the whole breadth of human existence and, ultimately, in the structure of being itself. It must be considered ontologically (or the nature of reality) in order to be understood ethically.
Have you ever met someone extremely comfortable in their own skin? Despite everything — they seemed to be authentically themselves.
The courage to be is the ethical act in which one affirms their own being, explained Tillich. Courage is self-affirmation — in spite of “that which tends to prevent the self from affirming itself.”
The poet Goethe put it this way, “Everyone holds his fortune in their own hands, like a sculptor, the raw material he will fashion into a figure.” But as Goethe observed, we are merely born with the capability — we must all cultivate the courage to be.
2. Freedom (and Anxiety)
In the classic book The Meaning of Anxiety, existential psychologist Rollo May wrote — Kierkegaard held that anxiety is always to be understood as oriented toward freedom.
Psychologically speaking, freedom is the goal of personality development; “The good is freedom.”
For Kierkegaard, freedom is ultimately defined as — possibility. However, this freedom gives rise to anxiety. There is anxiety in any actualizing of possibility. The more possibility (creativity) an individual has, the more potential for anxiety.
As Kierkegaard observed, “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self … And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.”
Similarly, Tillich discussed freedom in The Courage to Be,
Man, as finite freedom, is free within the contingencies of his finitude. But within these limits he is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become, to fulfill his destiny.”
Simply put, freedom gives birth to the responsibility of becoming who we are. To quote Jean-Paul Sartre in Existentialism Is a Humanism, “Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence.
3. Being (and Becoming)
My conversation with Skye Cleary (author of How to Be Authentic) discussed the concepts of authenticity and becoming. The French existential philosopher Simone de Beauvoir pointed to authenticity as a foundational element of the meaning of life.
To the question, “What is becoming?” Cleary responded,
For Beauvoir, there is no fixed essence to our being since we are always becoming something other than what we are today. For Beauvoir, “existence precedes essence,” meaning that we exist first and then spend the rest of our lives creating who we are (our essence).
Creating ourselves is an art form — the act of intentionally choosing who we become. In the short book On Being and Becoming, author Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei explains,
“In order to embrace our lives as our very own, to shake free from the inherited expectations, the pressures of the crowd, or mere habit, we need to exercise invention.”
What if the past has nothing (or at least very little) to do with who you decide to become at this moment? And the next moment.
We can learn much from great artists about embracing the idea of becoming. The legendary artist Andy Warhol advised, “Don’t think about making art; just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
Warhol’s ideas apply to life as well. What if we did less thinking about living — and just lived? Less thinking about good or bad — and just made more life (becoming)?
Or, as the philosopher Montaigne put it,
“My art and profession is to live.”
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. If you want more intro audio messages, feel free to let me know!
Nice read. Sometimes I think this becoming is like running down a hill. Once you stop, you fall. But how would I like to find a little valley to just be...