Spiritual Writings by Soren Kierkegaard

Author:Soren Kierkegaard
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780062036360
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

* From Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al., eds., Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 10 (Copenhagen: Gad, 2004), pp. 297–307.

* Matthew 6: 24–34; see pp. 85–86.

† James 1:11.

‡ Psalm 103:16.

* Matthew 10:29.

8

The Anxieties We Invent Ourselves*

* * *

DO NOT BE ANXIOUS ABOUT TOMORROW, FOR IT IS THE PAGANS WHO SEEK AFTER ALL THESE THINGS.

The bird does not have this anxiety.

No matter how high up in the sky he flew to look down on the world, and no matter what else he saw, he never saw “the next day.” No matter how far he traveled, no matter what else he saw, he never saw “the next day.” And if we say of the lily that “today it is, and tomorrow it is cast into the oven,” it is a noble, simple, wise creature that, no matter how much or how directly this concerns it, is never concerned by it—it is only occupied with what concerns it all the more closely, namely, the fact that it is today. And no matter how many days the bird saw break and end, he never saw “the next day.” For the bird does not see visions—and the next day is seen only by spiritual beings; nor is the bird troubled by dreams—and the next day is a persistent dream that returns over and over again; nor is the bird ever restless—but the next day makes every day restless. But when the bird flies far off into the distance, it is as if he arrived at his destination on the same day as he left his home. We may travel so fast by train that we get to a faraway place in a single day, but the bird is more cunning or, rather, faster still: he travels many, many days and yet arrives on the same day. No train travels as fast as that, not even if it were to travel as far. No, no one can find the time to go as quickly as the bird, and no one can go so far in such a short time as the bird. There is no yesterday for the bird and no tomorrow, he lives only in the day, just as the lily blossoms for only a day.

Naturally, the bird has no anxiety about the next day, but anxiety about the next day is precisely a trouble you yourself have invented, which is why the bird is without this kind of anxiety. And what exactly is this trouble you yourself invent? It is a trouble that “this very day,” today (which has troubles enough of its own), doesn’t have. And what is it to invent troubles for yourself? It is to be the cause of your own troubles. Now, the bird can also have troubles in the day in which he lives, today can have troubles enough for him, but he doesn’t have tomorrow’s troubles as well—because he lives only in the day. We can put this another way by saying that this is because he has no “self.”

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