“Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.” – Søren Kierkegaard
I’ve been amazed at these words of Kierkegaard since I first read them when I was in my twenties. How can so much truth—with even a touch of the humour and enigma of life’s mystery—live in a single 12-word sentence? It’s certainly one of the most profound sentences I’ve ever come across.
I’ve been looking at a time gone by. In such contemplations, patterns are revealed that weren’t visible when what are now memories were the moving finger writing the present. How could they have been?
It becomes clear, when looking creatively at the past, that a great drama is always going on in our lives. Sometimes we may long for excitement or joy that doesn’t seem available in the present, and wax nostalgic for a certain magical “back then.” But upping the power of our contemplative lenses usually makes us realize that even during the period that seemed so magical, weeks went by with no discernible change or excitement, or with change so gradual that it was unnoticeable. Seeing the big picture in memory brings home the sense of the greatness of the drama, now fully ripened, and how each part contributed to the whole.
I become aware that movement was going on when I wasn’t aware of it. The times before a certain catalyst entered my life seemingly “out of the blue”; the changes wrought; the apparently quiet intervals, even during the period I recall now as transformative; and finally a climax and denouement leading to the end of a chapter and the precipitation of the next—all of these come before my mind’s eye now when I meditate on a particular period.
The viewing of such a lived-out pattern leads me to the thought, “But surely the drama is going on now!” I become newly aware that the curtain of the ongoing drama of my life rises with every new dawn. The past is something we can survey to note patterns and glean wisdom, when we look with a mature attitude. But all such contemplations bring us back to the present, the only cutting edge between the known and the unknown.
What story is unfolding now? Does it seem like “same-old, same-old”? Am I sure that the stream of transformation is not flowing silently underneath a seemingly stable appearance, and feeding, feeding the life in everything until a new surprise suddenly breaks out, or a slow, steady new spring arrives?
No, we can’t be sure. My job is to notice. My job is to be here as fully as I can, poised between action and inaction—ready.
Hmm. Did Kierkegaard truly manage to say all this in one sentence?
image: Janicskovsky (Creative Commons BY-NC-ND)
