Kierkegaard Saw Why Your Search for a Definition Is Keeping You Stuck
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You’ve named your values, written your purpose statement, curated your personality like a brand. And yet you still don’t know who you are.
Søren Kierkegaard knew that hollow ache intimately. In 1841, he broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen, the woman he loved, not because he didn’t want her, but because he realised marriage would hand him a fixed identity—husband, provider, citizen—before he’d done the terrifying work of becoming anything himself. He spent his remaining years writing furiously under fake names, refusing to be categorized, and walking the streets of Copenhagen like a flâneur with a secret. The question he asked still cuts through every personality test, every ‘find your purpose’ journal, and every Sunday…
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