State of constant discovery OR: Kierkegaard and Krishnamurti

Most people avoid anxiety. Change is often anxious. We create identities to avoid change, we want things to be permanent — but they cannot be. The wave of Life always shatters them — and we become anxious again.

There is this fella named Kierkegaard, who basically argues that you should realize that your present identity is fundamentally a cultural construction. You didn’t choose the time and place of your birth, you didn’t choose your name. You didn’t choose necessarily even the social role that you occupy — you might have chosen from what’s available in your culture but not from the full palette of human opportunities.

Kierkegaard said is that we need to realize that we’ve been living a lie. A necessary lie of sorts — to cope with life. However, if we dispose of this lie momentarily, what happens? Here I am, without any luggage of identifying myself and descriptions of who I am.

It is a scary moment. Because in a sense, the worst thing to be is no one or no thing — everyone wants power, fame, status, permanence — it is very hard to give up. He then goes on to suggest that you should metaphorically and literally rebuild yourself from the ground up. Do you follow?

The question of rebuilding oneself is where I become skeptic. Why build anything at all? It seems like that question is missing the point — why destroy an identity to instantly build another?

I understand the reason to build an identity is for outward endeavors. To be able to interact with other people we put up this mask, play a theater of sorts — something I think is necessary some of the time. However, inwards, when being yourself (as we are most of the time) no such identity is needed. I think that is an important distinction. If you play this theater game with yourself there will probably be conflict and a general waste of energy. Rather be truthful with yourself.

What is it to be without an identity? It seems to be a state of constant self discovery, constant creation. With as few constraints as possible. Be with yourself, be with life as closely as possible and be change itself. Doesn’t this remind you of a child? Generally they seem to be closer to this state than most adults. It is a quality I admire a lot but is hard to reach after a life of building identities.

Some sources for some of these thoughts:

[1] Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (Creation)

[2] https://youtu.be/4cX-z-MyNrU (Kierkegaard)

[3] The book of Life (Krishnamurti)

Recap: Your identity is simply a construct of your childhood and culture that brought you up. Thoughts about how to behave have almost become synonym for you. What is good and bad, how to behave, what to do and what not to do. All this luggage acts as a filter through which we see reality . What if you would skip all this luggage, would you not be closer to reality? What if you then would act based on reality as you see it moment to moment?