Thought of the Day

So today I found Kierkegaard. I've only read a few of his journal entries thus far, but one of them in particular spoke acutely to where I am right now (excluding the Gods will and Christianity references, but replace that with life and it pretty much sums up my current existential crises).

What I really need is to get clear about what I am to do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find my purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth that is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. Of what use would it be to me to discover a so called objective truth, to work through the philosophical systems so that I could, if asked, make critical judgments about them, could point out the fallacies in each system; of what use would it be to me to be able to develop a theory of the state, getting details from various sources and combining them into a whole, and constructing a world I did not live in but merely held up for others to see; of what use would it be to me to be able to formulate the meaning of Christianity, to be able to explain many specific points--if it had no deeper meaning for me and for my life?


Currently my answer to the question what am I to do is: learn. But then if learning is the only thing I can believe in, the only thing I feel worthwhile, my fear is that, since living life doesn't appeal to me as much as understanding life, by the time I get to be old and gray, I may be wise, but I won't have lived in a meaningful sense, in a purposeful sense, because I haven't found an idea, belief, illusion, whatever to live for.