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| Trying to find peace amid uncertainty? Try Kierkegaard. | Trying to find peace amid uncertainty? Try Kierkegaard. |
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| Howard Blum, a former New York Times reporter, is a nonfiction author whose “ | Howard Blum, a former New York Times reporter, is a nonfiction author whose “ |
| Night of the Assassins | Night of the Assassins |
| : The Untold Story of Hitler’s Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill and Stalin” will be published in June. | : The Untold Story of Hitler’s Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill and Stalin” will be published in June. |
| The Ides of March was the Roman deadline for settling debts. On this March 15, a lot of unsettling stuff is swirling around the country. One political party is marching in lockstep to the beat of an authoritarian drum, while the other is seemingly intent on tearing itself asunder. The global economy is flashing code-red alerts in which a nose-diving Dow Jones industrial average is only one disconcerting sign among many. Then, oh yeah, there’s the constant tintinnabulation of the warning bells signaling that a pandemic is racing uncontrollably around the planet. Has the Big Get Even finally come to collect mankind’s long-accumulated debts? | The Ides of March was the Roman deadline for settling debts. On this March 15, a lot of unsettling stuff is swirling around the country. One political party is marching in lockstep to the beat of an authoritarian drum, while the other is seemingly intent on tearing itself asunder. The global economy is flashing code-red alerts in which a nose-diving Dow Jones industrial average is only one disconcerting sign among many. Then, oh yeah, there’s the constant tintinnabulation of the warning bells signaling that a pandemic is racing uncontrollably around the planet. Has the Big Get Even finally come to collect mankind’s long-accumulated debts? |
| I am spooked. And figuring out how to respond to the onslaught of uncertainties isn’t easy. I can’t just hole up in my bedroom and binge on Netflix. So I’m searching, trying to scramble my way to a mind-set in which I can stare down what’s coming, and nevertheless get on with things. | I am spooked. And figuring out how to respond to the onslaught of uncertainties isn’t easy. I can’t just hole up in my bedroom and binge on Netflix. So I’m searching, trying to scramble my way to a mind-set in which I can stare down what’s coming, and nevertheless get on with things. |
| The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard offers some advice. In his writings, he argues that there are three ways — stages of development, actually — that illustrate how people deal with whatever life hurls at them. The least evolved individuals are those who simply give up, surrendering to life’s daunting challenges. At the highest level is the “knight of faith.” On this elevated plane, even if you have every reason to believe that doom threatens, you can still believe that things are somehow, some way, going to work out just fine. It’s one part absurdist, Joan Didion-like magical thinking, to another part steadfast belief in a benevolent divine will. It’s recognizing, as a steely Didion does, that sometimes “life changes fast. Life changes in an instant” for the worse, yet still finding reason to hope. | The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard offers some advice. In his writings, he argues that there are three ways — stages of development, actually — that illustrate how people deal with whatever life hurls at them. The least evolved individuals are those who simply give up, surrendering to life’s daunting challenges. At the highest level is the “knight of faith.” On this elevated plane, even if you have every reason to believe that doom threatens, you can still believe that things are somehow, some way, going to work out just fine. It’s one part absurdist, Joan Didion-like magical thinking, to another part steadfast belief in a benevolent divine will. It’s recognizing, as a steely Didion does, that sometimes “life changes fast. Life changes in an instant” for the worse, yet still finding reason to hope. |
| But it’s the third Kierkegaard option that does the trick for me. Maybe my Bronx roots have left me too combative to run from a fight, and I’ve grown too old (and watch cable news too often) to believe in happy endings. | But it’s the third Kierkegaard option that does the trick for me. Maybe my Bronx roots have left me too combative to run from a fight, and I’ve grown too old (and watch cable news too often) to believe in happy endings. |
| It’s this interim stage, the one nestled between his two extremes, that I’m trying to settle into as I attempt to navigate through these dicey times. I’m doing my best to try to emulate Kierkegaard’s “knight of infinite resignation.” That is, I see what’s lurking out there, all right, but I’m trying, with mixed success, to whistle my way insouciantly through the potential apocalypse. | It’s this interim stage, the one nestled between his two extremes, that I’m trying to settle into as I attempt to navigate through these dicey times. I’m doing my best to try to emulate Kierkegaard’s “knight of infinite resignation.” That is, I see what’s lurking out there, all right, but I’m trying, with mixed success, to whistle my way insouciantly through the potential apocalypse. |
| That attitude has me turning to poems I haven’t thought about for years. I’m looking for guidance and solace in books I hadn’t taken off the shelf in ages, some with underlining and notations made a lifetime ago in college. Consider: | That attitude has me turning to poems I haven’t thought about for years. I’m looking for guidance and solace in books I hadn’t taken off the shelf in ages, some with underlining and notations made a lifetime ago in college. Consider: |
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| There’s a chilling beauty of a poem by W.H. Auden, stark lines conceived in 1940 as Europe was plunging into the terrible mystery of war. “Time will say nothing but I told you so. / Time only knows the price we have to pay,” he flatly contends, full of a hard-edged bravery, in “If I Could Tell You.” Whatever is in store for us, well, it’s coming and so we might as well not try to put the unseen pieces of the puzzle together; just deal with it when it arrives. | There’s a chilling beauty of a poem by W.H. Auden, stark lines conceived in 1940 as Europe was plunging into the terrible mystery of war. “Time will say nothing but I told you so. / Time only knows the price we have to pay,” he flatly contends, full of a hard-edged bravery, in “If I Could Tell You.” Whatever is in store for us, well, it’s coming and so we might as well not try to put the unseen pieces of the puzzle together; just deal with it when it arrives. |
| A similarly stoic resolve was more bitterly expressed by Robert Frost in 1920 as he considered mankind’s fate after World War I. “Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice,” he begins. But ultimately the weary, reconciled poet decides that it’s really pretty much a toss-up, since either fire or ice will quite effectively get the job done. | A similarly stoic resolve was more bitterly expressed by Robert Frost in 1920 as he considered mankind’s fate after World War I. “Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice,” he begins. But ultimately the weary, reconciled poet decides that it’s really pretty much a toss-up, since either fire or ice will quite effectively get the job done. |
| Still, Nikki Giovanni managed to find comfort — love, in fact! — in a decidedly more upbeat, less menacing surrender. In “Resignation,” she accepts the inescapable logic of things beyond her control “because the Earth turns round the sun / because the North wind blows north.” | Still, Nikki Giovanni managed to find comfort — love, in fact! — in a decidedly more upbeat, less menacing surrender. In “Resignation,” she accepts the inescapable logic of things beyond her control “because the Earth turns round the sun / because the North wind blows north.” |
| And then there’s the reliably gloomy Philip Larkin, reminding us in “Aubade” that “Most things may never happen: this one will.” It’s the singular flaw we all share — there’s nothing anyone can do to escape when our time comes. | And then there’s the reliably gloomy Philip Larkin, reminding us in “Aubade” that “Most things may never happen: this one will.” It’s the singular flaw we all share — there’s nothing anyone can do to escape when our time comes. |
| These are the words, frank and uncompromising though they may be, that are nonetheless helping me to get by. I’ve deleted Bob Dylan’s end times “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” from my playlist, but now I find myself listening to his “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” with a new sense of recognition. I’m heading into the spring wearing the solid armor of a knight of infinite resignation, but I’m also spending a lot of time washing my hands. | These are the words, frank and uncompromising though they may be, that are nonetheless helping me to get by. I’ve deleted Bob Dylan’s end times “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” from my playlist, but now I find myself listening to his “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” with a new sense of recognition. I’m heading into the spring wearing the solid armor of a knight of infinite resignation, but I’m also spending a lot of time washing my hands. |
| The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us. | The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us. |
| Read more: | Read more: |
| The Post’s View: Lock down, but don’t shut down | The Post’s View: Lock down, but don’t shut down |
| Nicholas A. Christakis: Compassion in the time of coronavirus | Nicholas A. Christakis: Compassion in the time of coronavirus |
| Megan McArdle: When a danger is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t | Megan McArdle: When a danger is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t |
| Robert J. Samuelson: What the Crash of 2020 means | Robert J. Samuelson: What the Crash of 2020 means |