This is how a Danish professor of psychology led me out of the dark.
Jaakko Lyytinen
I defied authorities and traveled on a ski holiday to Lapland. I wanted to escape the anxiety caused by a pandemic. I wanted to hurt the top of Kukastunturi and find the zen or what these are now.
Everything went towards the pine cone.
The boots broke up. I was arranging new ones as I got entangled in mono ribbons and crashed. The palm fractured. A finger stuck obliquely like a traffic sign in the wake of neighboring Sierra.
The next morning the rest of the family set off on the track. I had a compassionate look: Are you doing well?
I would swipe with my plastered hand. Go already so I can sleep in peace.
I was in a ski paradise, but I couldn’t ski. I couldn’t get on the track to melt the anxiety, so the anxiety started to melt me.
I headed for a walk and took an audiobook with me. What is being human? novel told of a young Andreaa who is going around Europe. The book takes you on a journey to humanity and the core of thinking, the work was filmed. I squinted cynically and set out to leap.
On the ice of Äkäslompolo, the voice in my ears began to speak of self-control and the preservation of peace of mind and dignity even in times of adversity.
Philosophy is training for death, the voice said. Fear of death weighs heavily on a person and makes life feel vicious, but with the help of philosophy, one can take a sensible approach to it, in which case the fear disappears.
Inside the novel, another book had opened, a kind of series of essays. It treated philosophy in a way that drifted into my head like a pontoon.
Book written by Svend Brinkmann is a professor of psychology at the University of Aalborg in Denmark. 45-year-old Brinkmann appears in the pictures from a sporty serial entrepreneur: a trimmed beard, a lightweight jacket and a smart watch. In his home country, Brinkmann became a celebrity intelligent when he published a book in 2014 Stay strong – life without self-help. It was a civilized attack on the ubiquitous talk of change and the culture of self-development. From Brinkmann, Stoic philosophy would lead to a deeper joy of life than a superficial focus on constant development and change.
In his new novel, Brinkmann reaches further. He goes through the human image and art history of philosophy. He writes about love, sorrow, happiness, the dark sides of man, and transhumanism.
Next on the day the formula was repeated. The others went on the track. You can. I waved my plaster hand. Go already.
I walked towards Kesänkijärvi as the voice began to speak Søren from Kierkegaard, a philosopher and theologian who influenced in the early 19th century. That’s when the world moved into modern times. The appreciation of individuality rose. At the same time, feelings of loneliness and meaninglessness became more common. Maybe that’s why Kierkegaard wrote about anxiety.
The voice said: Anxiety is a human-only phenomenon that requires an understanding of non-existence – of what the anxious person has not yet done – the opportunity to act and, in essence, freedom. Thus, anxiety arises alongside self-reflective humanity. The voice explained that, according to Kierkegaard, me means our ability to self-observe. With it, we achieve freedom of choice, but as a gift, we get anxiety.
I pressed the pause. The seven fells rising around Äkäslompolo were covered behind a gauze. I felt the lump begin to melt.
Exam at one time in the university a half-meter stack of classics of ideological history and philosophy. That’s when I was a twenty twenty. I wanted to sing, drink and love. I didn’t fade in the reading room. Reading the philosophy was as wise as watering the grass with Meukow’s XO cognac. I learned the illusion of general education: I know enough to be able to smoothly cover what I don’t know.
Perhaps Brinkmann’s book appealed to me so strongly because the organic waste of life experiences had finally enriched the soil loose enough.
When I was walking in Äkäslompolo with Kierkegaard, I remembered a moment in April 2018. I was in the car in the parking lot of Koskela Hospital. Death sat down next to me without asking permission. You are next, it said and left with me its black shadow.
I later realized that my crisis was packed with more than just the fear of death. It was an escape from the repetition and routine of life. It felt like the lanes were locked in the slot machine of life.
I searched and got help. I gradually realized that the insatiable thirst for answers doesn’t just depend on the stage of life. It is built into us. And it has created a market for the self-help industry criticized by Brinkmann, which trades in instant pain relief and instant happiness.
A pandemic that has stalled normal life threatens to make us all mentally middle-aged and middle-aged. The change speech of the lifestyle lawyers is blocking the ether, but there would also be quieter wisdom on offer.
In a novel by a Danish professor, I found gates to new gardens. In addition to the dark roses of Kierkegaard, they bloom in them Iris Murdochin thoughts on the essence of love and Simon Critchley reflections on the relationship between faith and ethics.
According to Critchley, grief shapes us and ultimately gives us the most important values of our lives. Grief shows that we can never fully control life. Above all, we are vulnerable, fragile and deficient. And it is our fundamental fragility that creates the demand for ethics in people’s coexistence.
Most importantly, I am not. And not you. But our responsibility to each other.
.
#week #accident #ruined #skiing #dream #Danish #professor #psychology #gave #unexpected #gift
source https://pledgetimes.com/at-the-end-of-the-week-the-accident-ruined-my-skiing-dream-but-a-danish-professor-of-psychology-gave-him-an-unexpected-gift/
Disqus comments