Post-existential

I've been working for my adviser this summer as a research assistant, as many of you know. My job this summer has been to sift through his research files on Rollo May, especially those pertaining to the period between 1955-1970. Lately, I've been reading about some of May's thoughts on his own work as an intellectual and writer. May was a central figure in the founding of the existential approach to psychology and psychiatry, and, as such, his self-assessment during the foundational period of the movement is drenched in existential language. May writes often about how he feels frustrated with his own work for a number of reasons (fears of inadequacy, rivalry with others, etc.). However, one of the themes that stands out is his insistence that he puts obligations on himself in order to ignore the freedom he has to choose his actions. In other words, its not just enough to write, but he should be doing it freely, with a sense calm and joy.

I can relate to May on this, because I often struggle with feelings of obligation. It is a rare day that I undertake my tasks with a feeling of happiness or calm. Like May, I pile up tasks for myself, because I'm afraid of feeling like there will be nothing to motivate me without a constant drive of accomplishments.

I dealt with feelings like this especially during my last year of college. I was writing about Kierkegaard that year, so I saw everything in my life, but especially my faith, as a matter of choice. I came to believe that it wasn't enough to have faith in Christ out of obligation to my family. However, in the Kierkegaardian choice, it wasn't enough simply to choose to do it. Rather, one had to choose one's life fully and passionately and totally--almost as though once the choice had been made no room for doubts would exist. I couldn't will myself or pray myself or agonize myself to this kind of choice. Or rather, the choice that I made was against faith, because I couldn't embrace it in the totalizing way that I understood it at the time.

Rollo May seemed to think of his intellectual calling in the same way--that it was only legitimate if he was "feeling it" and doing it freely every day. I can understand this feeling, because I sometimes try to convince myself that if I stopped thinking of my research as an obligation, then getting myself to do it wouldn't be a chore, but a joy. However, I'm beginning to question the legitimacy of the extremity of the either/or--both because its impact on my faith and on my work.

I still believe in choice. I cannot imagine a moral universe in which choice and free will aren't at least a part of the equation, even if they are a tiny part compared to biology and environmental factors. Nevertheless, it seems to me unrealistic to expect that a person would or even could live every day in a state of joy and freedom, if freedom means feeling no sense of obligation. Rather, we choose certain things and make them obligations. Thus, the sense of obligation is only harmful when we imagine that the obligation wasn't something that we chose originally. In other words, there will be many days that my dissertation research doesn't feel like a freely chosen attempt to contribute to human knowledge and understanding. However, I only live in "bad faith" on the days that I don't acknowledge that these obligations were freely chosen at some point and could be freely given up. Maybe joy and happiness and fortunate by-products on the good days?

Reading May's thoughts encourages me to think that I really shouldn't beat myself up for the days that I do feel obligated and that I struggle to make myself work. Not wanting to work isn't a horrible sin or failing--it's just another fact of existence on occasion.

When it comes to faith, I'm beginning to see that thinking of it in totally Kierkegaardian terms was unhealthy for me. First, it made me concerned that having doubts amounted to a failure to choose properly. Second, I had unreasonable expectations for my emotional status on a given day. The problem that I have with Christianity is that I cannot imagine it operating in any other way. And, I don't want to live life like that. However, it could be that my understanding of both Kierkegaard and Christianity in general lacked a certain level of maturity and balance. I expected too much from myself and my feelings and perhaps too much from my religion. I don't know.

All of that may sound like I'm looking to find my way back into "the fold." But, I'm not. I still prefer my vague and open-ended approach for now. Too much certainty makes me uncomfortable, and I really don't like the idea of a god who is so personally involved with me. Deism makes more sense to me than evangelicalism, and I'm more comfortable with that idea of God than any other. And, really, I keep a decidedly agnostic stance. Besides, who can truly know the mind of God? I'm guessing that I can't. And I'm unlikely to have a mystical experience any time soon, despite the fact that I study them.

In sum, as much as I love and respect many things about the existential approach to life, I am now, to be annoyingly academic, post-existential. Whatever that means. Better that than postmodern, eh?