Fear & Trembling
by Soren Kierkegaard
currently reading
I read this one occasionally. It’s one of those works that makes you realize you need to see a thousand half-finished paintings to recognize a masterpiece. I don’t talk about it much, but my given name is Isaak. Max is my middle name, which I go by day to day, and I’ve always felt some mental connection to Kierkegaard’s musings on Isaac’s relationship with his father, Abraham, and God. I’ve always asked myself why my own dad so willingly gave me over to sacrifice through his actions, just as Abraham did.
I’ve liked Kierkegaard’s take that it amounts to attempted murder on Abraham’s part, and that he cannot find the swimmer’s strokes within himself to follow Abraham’s path of faith. I think of my own experience and agree. Isaac was named as such because he caused Abraham and Sarah to laugh upon learning of his conception, owing to Sarah being old enough that she would not normally have borne more children. In my life, this is not reflected as joy but as laughter of concern or discomfort. I don’t think I was meant to be born; my parents likely wouldn’t admit this fact.
In some way, I’m named appropriately. My dad also had the chance to resist a call from a higher power—his own mental illness—but did as was commanded and inflicted injury upon me. To both me and Kierkegaard, it seems impossible that you would not live with some regret over these calls to malignant action. Abraham’s faith in God was so absolute that when God demanded Isaac, Abraham maintained that God would also deliver Isaac. With no discernible way to resolve that contradiction, Abraham still did as commanded. Ken could not see that his god might have spoken falsehoods, and his own faith in himself could not live by that same contradiction. Isaac’s Abraham may have been spared the reality of killing his child, but my Abraham will never see his son again.
Johannes asks himself: how can I see the swimmer’s movements, know the strokes, enter the water, but still find that my body will not behave as it has been taught? My own experience deepens that lesson by asking: what do we do when we can’t even know the strokes or the dance? How do we have what Abraham has? Do we create our own faith? I don’t think we can create what Abraham has or imitate his devotion. I’ll make the counterpoint that I can choose to create my own God and follow the ideals he lays down. I can show love and kindness and maybe be the faith other people need. That has always been my lesson from the examination of Abraham and the knight of faith.
When a girl I had quickly fallen for said she didn’t see me in her future, after future planning, inviting intimacy, and previously telling me she wanted me in her private world, I so wanted to scream and shout that I’m good enough, that I deserve things I cannot have, or that I’ve been wronged. I can’t scream. I don’t deserve anything, and I haven’t been wronged, but, like all people, that urge will always be there. I hope she never finds this because I’m going to say something I shouldn’t: I loved you. I loved you too quickly and too foolishly, and I hurt myself in my own confusion. I think I still do love you, even when I know some of what you said so deeply offended me that it’s hard to describe. I don’t think you’d even know what you said if I told you this. I’ll probably never hear from you again, and I don’t deserve some answer, but I saw myself reflected in you as if looking into a mirror, and it turned out to be a puddle on a warm day.
So I’ll finish this book, where I will hopefully reaffirm that, if I do hear from you again, I can be kind and wish you happiness in finding the man who is for you, and lastly forgive you for going too far, too fast, in a direction we both should have changed. I’ll find that spark of trying to find joy in the world again. It’ll just take me some time to get over being asked to come in and having the door shut in my face. Until I do, I’m going to go out and smile and say thank you and ask people how their days are, and hope that I can keep anyone else from feeling how I’m feeling right now.
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