"How Then Shall We Live?"
by Rev. Kimi Riegel
April 28, 2002

Learning to know anxiety is an adventure
which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition (hell)
either by not having known anxiety or by sinking under it.
He therefore who has leaned rightly to be in anxiety
has learned the most important thing.

—Søren Kierkegaard (2x)

Anxiety is a universal experience shared by all. Thus we are faced with two choices in life. We may either deny it or learn to live with it. I have come to agree with Kierkegaard, who suggests that one of the tasks in life is to come to know anxiety and learn to be with it.

However, by way of a qualifier this morning I feel I should state at the outset that for some people this emotion pervades their every waking moment, minute upon minute, hour upon hour, day upon day, month upon month, and year upon year. It is not my intention to romanticize this state of being, as such an extreme experience of angst can be personally debilitating and perhaps lead to outright depression. Fortunately for such folks there is help in the form of psychotherapy and medications. So I would encourage anyone for whom anxiety is this debilitating to get professional attention.

What I intend to address this morning is a less acute form of anxiety to which most people can relate on a daily basis. We might call this “generalized anxiety,” or “existential angst.” This type of anxiety or angst generally takes the form of fleeting but intense feelings of insignificance, loss of meaning, or dread of the end of life. Consistent with the words from Kierkegaard I read moment ago, I want to suggest that these are signals or symptoms that we should be living our lives closer both to our professed values and the people with whom we share the planet. Seen in this light, anxiety can become life-giving, reminding us to get back to what matters most, both to live closer to the center of our own lives as well as more intimately with others.

Anxiety has been with humanity for centuries, perhaps longer. Maybe ancient humans had sleepless nights worrying about the very real fear of not finding food or of becoming food. If we project our modern mindset onto their paintings we can even imagine that they too looked up at the sky and wondered – wondered. Why are we here? Where did we come from? and perhaps most disturbingly, Where are we going?

These questions have always plagued humanity. And in what has been called the postmodern world the answers to the questions have become more difficult to find. The Second World War and the cold war that followed brought humanity closer to the edge of distinction than it cared to consider. We clung desperately to the notion that religion would still survive, that there was meaning to our way of life, and the old ideas of upward and onward forever were still true. To a large extent we have found that NO answer is THE answer to those questions. No religion has Truth with a capital T. There is no objective, given, meaning for our lives only the meaning we create for ourselves along the way, and life is not a straight line to the better, it goes more in a spiral of concentric events and occurrences with connections that are hard to grasp. We truly feel adrift and that makes for a great deal of existential angst.

Years ago I became aware of the insignificant nature of my existence like most folks do, starring up into the night sky. This was not just any night sky but the pure black of the night in northern Minnesota. Standing on a dock as the Milky Way stretched over my head I was filled with ”fear and trembling,” to steal a title from Kierkegaard. I was struck with a radical sense of my own insignificance. Even the tinniest stars were millions of times bigger than my little life; and there were so many of them!  

What is the point in brushing your teeth the next morning?[i]  

Thus for me, in that moment, as for so many others at so many times and in so many ways, existential angst was born; that feeling of dread and anxiety that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. Why am I here? What IS the meaning of my life? Where am I headed?

Of course, gazing up at the starry night sky is the romantic’s way of experiencing angst.  It can be started by far more mundane experiences than this. Rocking my son to sleep at night can do this for me. Hearing about a flood in India can do this. Heck, reading the headlines with my morning tea often does it!  

Secretary of State Colin Powell failed to get the cease-fire he sought as he ended his 10-day peace mission, leaving Israel and the Palestinians mired in violence and recrimination.

or

Former Indiana State Trooper sentenced in the murder of his wife and two young children. He receives the maximum sentence of 195 years in prison.

To name but two.

I can feel the creeping up the back of my neck as I read these words even in the light of day – never mind when they inhabit the corners of my mind in the middle of the night.  

How do we live meaningful, happy lives in the midst of all of this? “Centeredness.” We need not to deny the realities of our lives, our radical finitude and the daily news headlines, but we need not become entangled in them either. Other people, our work lives, and the materials goods we chase like cats after mice, are all temptations that pull us off center. They remove us from the gifts that centeredness may bring: grace, receptivity, overabundance, and our own good will. The realities of our lives, as important as they are, need to be recognized as gateways to angst. “Centeredness” is the solution to these temptations to angst. For John Paul Sartre, the famous existentialist, this inability to stay centered is bad faith or self-deception and it destroys human freedom.

Man is free… says Sartre. I would add that the extent of our freedom depends on by what values we chooses to live. Certainly society pressures us to receive some specific ethical values or norms. But endorsement of these values is ultimately a choice, which, incidentally, is one of the fruits of human freedom. Society’s values become my values only through my own choices. One can always choose, as many do, to be what E. O. Wilson calls an ‘outsider’, to go against the grain of social coercion. Indeed, this is the Kierkegaardian existential dilemma facing humanity… the core conflict we all must face – and the root of existential angst. Whether to go along passively with society and ‘do what everyone else expects’ or to resist the others and it’s consequent existential anxiety of uncertainty (and freedom).”[ii] (Perhaps you recognize echoes of Emerson in these words, though I will save a discussion of him for some time later.)

Staying centered, preserving our freedom, means becoming conscious and selective about in what we become involved and what we choose. At the very least this means to balance all the negative input from the world with the beauty and joy that surrounds us every moment of everyday: the embrace of my husband, the warmth of my son’s small hand wrapped around my finger, my daughter’s snuggles at night, the first spring call of the red wing blackbird, a cool wind blowing over open water on a hot summer day, the cardinal perched on my bird feeder, the miracle of my own breath and heartbeat, a good sing along song on the radio, freshly fallen snow, the smell of fresh baked bread, knitting by a warm fire, a warm cup of tea, a meditation upon a tree that stands alone - reminding me that what is essential in life is the encounter of one being with another. These are the experiences we come to value when our values are freely and carefully chosen. This is the experience of being centered. This is the experience of ultimate goodness Sartre desires for us despite the angst that pervades modern life.        

Being selective in choosing what we covet, attempting to stay centered, can mean much more than this. It can also be a call to a deeply spiritual life. About four years ago Alex and I attended a workshop for counseling and Buddhism. One of the presenters offered the following four truths as a way to better our lives. He said: “Show up, pay attention, speak the truth, and Let go of the out come.” These four precepts are very powerful.  

Let me take them one at a time.  

Show up. Two simple words but so powerful. Show up. Be where the people who matter to you are. Be there emotionally and physically. Go to you child’s flute concert. Come home. Be the driver for the car pool. Go on errands together. Eat meals together. Stop when someone needs to talk. Be there to snuggle them in bed at night. Show up.

            Next is pay attention. Many things pull on us all at once; it’s hard to pay attention to just one of them. I know that often I am present, I have shown up, but I don’t always pay attention. I am reminded of the “good listening” posture our kids are taught. They are supposed to face the person, keep their hands and feet still, and look at the person who is talking. Basically, these are methods we teach are kids to help them “pay attention.” Sometimes that is hard when dinner needs to be made or work brought home demands our attention, but a strong antidote to existential angst is to pay attention to each other. Couples also need to show up and pay attention. Adult children need to show up and pay attention to their aging parents. Children need to be encouraged to pay attention to their parents, too. Does your family know what your days at work are like? Do they pay attention to what matters to you? We all feel better when we are paid some attention. Families that pay attention are stronger.

Next, speak the truth. Now this is a tricky one. My daughter still wonders if I was telling the truth when I praised her early art attempts. She now sees them as primitive at best and wonders if she can trust me to tell the truth now. Telling the truth isn’t simple. But we all need to be able to trust each other so we need to tell the truth. Sometimes its not easy to know what the truth is but even admitting that is a kind of truth telling. Open, honest communication is tough, but vital, and depends on truth telling, in the spirit of love, of course. Anxiety is reduced for all of us by trust and that is built one conversation at a time.

Finally, let go of the out come. This seems almost antithetical to the others, but there comes a point when we have done all we can. We can show up, pay attention, and tell the truth only so long. Eventually we must let go of the outcome. Eventually we must trust the process. We must do the best we can then lovingly let go. Our family, society and the world will be stronger individually and collectively if we do not try to push beyond our limits. Letting go involves trust and our families need to know we trust them. Letting go is that paradoxical piece of holding our families together. We hold them in our hearts, as we let go of the out come.  

Life is filled with hooks upon which to lay our existential angst. Kierkegaard would have us come to know that angst and be one with it. There is wisdom in this. There is also wisdom in the words of Sartre, who counseled us to preserve our human freedom by staying centered, by carefully choosing our values in the midst of that angst. For me this means to stay connected to the immediacy of my life, which I do by remembering to show up, pay attention, speak the truth, and let go of the outcome.

My hope for all of us is that:

            We use those moments of dread and feelings of insignificance to pull us back to life

            Let them call us back to our highest values

            Let them call us back to the immediacy of our lives

In times of joy may we remember our deepest suffering,

In times of suffering may we remember our greatest joy,

May we remember that neither our suffering nor our joy reveals what is essential in life; how we respond to that which immediately presents itself to us does that. So may it always be. Shalom. Blessed be. Namaste. Amen.