“Live Forward, Understand Backward > Kierkegaard: Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards, But It Must Be Lived Forwards

 

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"Life must be understood backwards. But it must be lived forwards." — Søren Kierkegaard Though we can only comprehend life in hindsight, we must continue moving forward. 🚶‍♂️ Reflect on how past experiences shape our journey ahead. 🎵 Music: "Moonlight Sonata" by Ludwig van Beethoven (1st Movement) #PauseAndThink #Kierkegaard #LifeReflections #Beethoven #PhilosophicalQuotes #LiveForward

Kierkegaard: Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards, But It Must Be Lived Forwards

The 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observes that while life can only be understood backwards, it must be lived forwards.

By Jack Maden  |  October 2023

If we insist on continuously trying to plan and execute the best life possible, all we can do is try to keep our worries, uncertainties, and expectations at bay as we fall forwards towards an open, unknowable future.

But if we accept that we will always have incomplete information, then perhaps we might also see the futility of trying to plan and control everything that happens.

We might realize, as the Stoic philosopher Epictetus also points out with his dichotomy of control, that insisting on reality being a certain way will likely lead to disappointment.

A statement often described as a ‘Kierkegaardian slogan’ (though it doesn’t actually appear in his writings) can help shed some light here:

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

We do not (and will never) have the information required to forever ‘fix’ our lives — so why approach them as problems that need to be solved at all?

SOURCE: Philosophy Break