Is is as if life or reality itself has had it in mind all along to unravel the very design i have been trying all along to impose on it.
Because it is possible to create _ creating one__ self, willing to be one__ self, as well as creating in all the innumerable daily activities (and these are two phases of the same process) _ one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever. Now creating, actualizing one__ possibilities, always involves negative as well as positive aspects. It always involves destroying the status quo, destroying old patterns within oneself, progressively destroying what one has clung to from childhood on, and creating new and original forms and ways of living. If one does not do this, one is refusing to grow, refusing to avail himself of his possibilities; one is shirking his responsibility to himself. Hence refusal to actualize one__ possibilities brings guilt toward one__ self. But creating also means destroying the status quo of one__ environment, breaking the old forms; it means producing something new and original in human relations as well as in cultural forms (e.g., the creativity of the artist). Thus every experience of creativity has its potentiality of aggression or denial toward other persons in one__ environment or established patterns within one__ self. To put the matter figuratively, in every experience of creativity something in the past is killed that something new in the present may be born. Hence, for Kierkegaard, guilt feeling is always a concomitant of anxiety: both are aspects of experiencing and actualizing possibility. The more creative the person, he held, the more anxiety and guilt are potentially present.
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Because it is possible to create _ creating one__ self, willing to be one__ self, as well as creating in all the innumerable daily activities (and these are two phases of the same process) _ one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever. Now creating, actualizing one__ possibilities, always involves negative as well as positive aspects. It always involves destroying the status quo, destroying old patterns within oneself, progressively destroying what one has clung to from childhood on, and creating new and original forms and ways of living. If one does not do this, one is refusing to grow, refusing to avail himself of his possibilities; one is shirking his responsibility to himself. Hence refusal to actualize one__ possibilities brings guilt toward one__ self. But creating also means destroying the status quo of one__ environment, breaking the old forms; it means producing something new and original in human relations as well as in cultural forms (e.g., the creativity of the artist). Thus every experience of creativity has its potentiality of aggression or denial toward other persons in one__ environment or established patterns within one__ self. To put the matter figuratively, in every experience of creativity something in the past is killed that something new in the present may be born. Hence, for Kierkegaard, guilt feeling is always a concomitant of anxiety: both are aspects of experiencing and actualizing possibility. The more creative the person, he held, the more anxiety and guilt are potentially present.
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