TL;DR
The journal entry reflects on anxiety using the metaphor of twisting and turning like a screw. It draws on philosophical ideas from Kierkegaard and Freud, suggesting that anxiety is necessary for progress and that stagnation results from avoiding it. The reflection emphasizes the importance of embracing anxiety as part of the human experience and finding resilience within oneself.
Twisting, turning, and then more twisting and more turning. That’s all there has been lately.
Søren Kierkegaard argued that anxiety was an important part of a holistic human experience and that it was key to achieving greatness. Was he right?
Think of the screw, that little tiny apparel that holds structures together. Twisting, turning, and then more twisting and more turning. That is the only way to move one of those little things in whatever direction; twisting, turning, and then more twisting and more turning. Could we say that twisting and turning, and the trembling that should engulf the soul of anything that moves as such, is analogous to anxiety? Does the screw move as a result of the potentially anxiety-birthing act of twisting and turning or does it move in spite of it?
I say the former is more plausible. The twisting and turning make it easier for the screw to create space for itself and then to gracefully occupy the said space. An attempt to drive a screw straight in, head on, will require more force than does the screwing and turning. It turns out that while being driven maintains a single perspective from the screw’s point of view, being twisted and turned, with the alternating perspectives that are spawned thereof, is an easier yet more effective way to move forward and oftentimes the only way to move backwards.
With the screw as with human experience, twisting is a necessary sine qua non for movement. With humans as may not be with screws, such twisting and turning will come with anxiety, as much as anxiety as there is twisting and turning. Good one, that is a sign that we are moving. Ours, then, is the task of ensuring that we are moving in the right direction. Ours, also, is not to attempt to avoid anxiety, Søren Kierkegaard was right after all.
The hallmark of a precipice is anxiety, more so for the good than for the bad. To not twist and to not turn is often sufficient evidence of dreaded stagnation. In the midst of our anxiety, that spell of winter, we must find that there is, within us, an invincible summer. And that should make us happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world nudges us, twists and turns from without and within, there’s something stronger – something better, grounding us after all.
Frued said there is only love and work, work and love. Maybe there was more; twisting and turning, turning and twisting.