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The judicious words of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the first existentialist philosopher, are apropos to end this lumbering manuscript.
1. “One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else.”
2. “Life always expresses the results of our dominate thoughts.”
3. “Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”
4. “Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.”
5. “Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.”
6. “Don’t forget to love yourself.”
7. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
8. “Life has its own hidden forces, which you can only discover by living.”
9. “The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, or read about, nor seen, but if one will, are to be lived.”
10. “Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.”
11. “It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate on only what is most significant and important.”
12. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
13. “Since my earliest childhood, a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic, if it is pulled out I shall die.”
14. “A man who as a physical being is always turned to the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside of him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.”
15. “Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend into a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.”
Kierkegaard warned, “The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.” Kierkegaard said that the one method to avoid losing oneself is to live joyfully in the moment, which he described as “to be present in oneself in truth,” which in turn requires “to be today, in truth be today.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)