In seeking out inspiration and guidance for multipotentialites, mid-nineteenth century philosophy might not seem like a natural choice. But, hear me out! In researching and writing about Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard over the past few years, I have found his work to be rich with insights for both coping with and embracing multipotentiality.
In 1835, a 22-year-old Kierkegaard wrote the following in his journal:
It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much and not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated to one but stand on an equal footing.
Do this thought process and predicament sound familiar to you as a multipotentialite?
When I first read this journal entry, it seemed to directly echo some of my own thoughts. When I discovered Kierkegaard’s work and began to read his journals, I was close to the same age he was when he described the “misfortune” of what we would call his multipotentiality.
I found powerful guidance in Kierkegaard’s published work as I was struggling to make sense of my life as a multipotentialite college student. Through his journals, I also gained meaningful insights into his own sense of identity and how he sought to integrate his disparate interests. I’ve found that Kierkegaard’s work provides a unique illustration of how an individual’s multipotentialite identity can develop and find expression throughout a lifetime.
While I love reading Kierkegaard, I wouldn’t exactly classify his books as casual reading material. His writing is complex and notoriously multifaceted, which artfully illustrates his ideas and their implications. He famously wrote under several pseudonyms, creating contrasting literary personas that allowed him to investigate ideas from different perspectives. But this writing approach, aptly described by Albert Camus as “fleeing clear proposals,” can also dissuade potential readers from exploring Kierkegaard’s work.
While Kierkegaard’s complex philosophical positions can’t be succinctly summarized—and I wouldn’t attempt to do so!—there are overarching themes present in his work that I think demand to be shared.
Kierkegaard’s writing has informed how I think about my multipotentialite identity, providing practical guidance for how I approach my life and challenging me to take responsibility for acting in alignment with my values. Here are five core ideas expressed throughout Kierkegaard’s writing that relate to multipotentiality, and how they might apply to your unique life as a multipotentialite individual.
1. Value your self-identity and trust your subjective knowledge
Throughout his life, Kierkegaard’s writing centered on the concepts of self-knowledge and subjective understanding. A related emphasis in his philosophical exploration involved the single individual, and the individual’s unique self.
In the invitingly titled book The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard defines different types of despair as originating in a lack of awareness of oneself, a refusal to be oneself, or a struggle to be oneself. The solution to this “disrelationship”—willing to be oneself, or seeking to understand, embrace, and embody your authentic self-identity—is deceptively simple and practically challenging, but ultimately crucial and empowering. Kierkegaard illustrates how an individual is ultimately responsible, both to herself and to the individuals in her life, for willing to be her truest self.
From a practical standpoint, this commitment involves trusting your subjective understanding of yourself and your values, being honest with yourself, and striving to act from a place of authenticity and responsibility. In his journals, Kierkegaard wrote, Only when the person has inwardly understood himself, and then sees the course forward from the path he is to take, does his life acquire repose and meaning.
For many of us, understanding and embracing our multipotentialite identity is a momentous step toward the type of honest self-knowledge and embodiment of self that enables us to truly thrive and cultivate confidence in our life choices. And as Kierkegaard’s own life reflects, this process of seeking self-knowledge is fluid, without a clear endpoint, as our experiences and perspectives evolve throughout our lives.
Kierkegaard encourages us not to ignore, deny, or suppress fundamental elements of our selfhood in seeking to understand our own identities. Then, most crucially, he challenges us to live our lives in accordance with this self-understanding. As Kierkegaard wrote in 1846, If a person does not become what he can understand, then he does not really understand it.
This process of understanding and action also means that we shouldn’t attempt to model our lives based on others’, which naturally connects to another theme in Kierkegaard’s work:
2. Refuse to conform to the crowd and defy the impulse to emulate
Kierkegaard often addressed the dichotomy between the individual person and what he referred to as “the crowd” or “the public.” In our contemporary context, one example of this idea might be you, an individual, in contrast with vague masses of people you might encounter on social media. In The Present Age, Kierkegaard describes the public as an abstraction, “consisting of unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization.” Kierkegaard was also highly critical of “the crowd” for its effect of weakening the individual’s sense of responsibility.
Unsurprisingly, Kierkegaard does not think highly of the vague concepts of the public or the crowd, instead reaffirming the value, responsibility, and possibility of the individual person.
For multipotentialites, the abstract idea of the public can find expression in desires to be like—or even to merely appear like—what we might describe as “most people.” Attempting to abide by others’ ideas of traditional career paths or lifestyles might make some aspects of life easier in the short-term. But these types of self-contradiction and self-denial ultimately cause confusion and suffering. For neurodivergent multipotentialites, I would also interpret Kierkegaard’s philosophy as encouraging us to refrain from masking in social settings as much as possible.
In conjunction with the importance of willing to be our authentic selves as individuals, Kierkegaard challenges us to defy the impulse to emulate others’ lives. For example, Kierkegaard drew significant inspiration from Socrates, but did not seek to become just like him, instead recognizing his own identity, skills, and goals as distinct. Role models can be important sources of inspiration, but they are not meant to be closely imitated.
By refusing to copy others in order to blend into the crowd, we as individuals have to accept responsibility to make our own decisions about our lives. Your self-identity, perspectives, and values are all distinctive and unlike those of any other person. Kierkegard felt this combined sense of opportunity and pressure in his own life. In 1854, he wrote in his journal, There is literally no one from whom I can learn how to comport myself.
The reality of our singularity as individuals is both exciting and, admittedly, slightly terrifying! But Kierkegaard also addresses the daunting nature of all of the choices we face in our lives, and how we can actually gain insights from the task of making decisions.
3. Learn to cope with anxiety and “the dizziness of freedom”
This metaphor embodies one of Kierkegaard’s key concepts, and possibly the one that multipotentialites can viscerally relate to most. In The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard integrated his interests in philosophy, psychology, and theology—in true multipotentialite fashion—to explore the origins of anxiety within the individual.
He famously describes anxiety as “the dizziness of freedom,” and elsewhere he characterizes anxiety as “freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.” In concluding, Kierkegaard describes how an individual can be “educated by possibility” and become able to learn from the struggles associated with this sense of dizziness.
Multipotentialites often confront this “dizziness” with a heightened intensity, as we can envision so many options and possibilities, all of which might be totally feasible. And in reality, even when we make decisions we feel fairly confident about, it’s rare that we won’t have some nagging doubts, regret, or curiosity about how things would’ve turned out if we’d chosen an alternative.
In his book Either/Or, Kierkegaard suggests that some regret is unavoidable, no matter what we ultimately choose. He even refers to this reality as “the essence of all philosophy.”. Considering this idea in conjunction with the metaphor of the “dizziness of freedom,” it becomes clear that a perfect choice with no uncertainty or regret probably isn’t possible, so it also isn’t reasonable to hold ourselves to that standard!
Decision-making is a central part of Kierkegaard’s work (I wrote my undergrad thesis about it!), and he appeared to struggle with making—and committing to—choices in his own life as well. But Kierkegaard demands that an individual takes responsibility for the decisions she makes, and for exercising the ability to change her mind.
In striving to understand ourselves better and act in a way that is informed by our unique self-identity and values, the best we can do is make choices based on what we know and feel at any given moment. Acknowledging this reality can help to alleviate some of the pressure involved in making decisions, maybe subduing a bit of our anxiety as well.
While confronting so many decisions can feel daunting and overwhelming, approaching these choices gradually becomes easier in conjunction with seeking to understand your self-identity better and act in alignment with your authentic self.
4. Create your own path and come to terms with potentially being misunderstood
In connection with embracing the challenges of possibility, Kierkegaard’s work—and his own life—demonstrates the necessity of creating a life that supports your own unique identity.
Kierkegaard ultimately integrated the interests that he referenced feeling torn between in his early twenties. This integration, which we might characterize as a “group hug” approach, finds expression throughout his work. Kierkegaard’s interests in philosophy, psychology, theology, science, and literature all informed his writing, allowing his work to stand out—and stand the test of time.
Throughout his life, Kierkegaard grappled with the idea that he would always be misunderstood by others, and he even suggested that it might not be possible for one individual to truly be known by another. As multipotentialites, especially while growing up or as young adults, we can experience this feeling to varying degrees as even well-meaning friends, family, or mentors struggle to grasp the diverging passions that make us who we are.
Also, as we mature and begin to make more momentous decisions for ourselves, standing by our choices and the values and passions that inform them can be more difficult when people around us don’t support our life choices. This issue can often stem from a type of misunderstanding similar to what Kierkegaard describes, and as multipotentialties we may tend to confront its manifestations in our everyday lives more frequently than specialists.
In 1836, Kierkegaard wrote, “people understand me so little that they fail even to understand my complaints that they do not understand me.” More than a decade later, in 1848, Kierkegaard appears to have come to terms with this perceived lack of understanding, writing, “I blame no one for anything, they haven’t understood me.” This statement coincides with indications in his journals that Kierkegaard was growing in self-assuredness and gradually becoming more confident in his life choices, even while people around him didn’t seem to reaffirm this assuredness.
This type of inwardly cultivated confidence in your own identity, abilities, and choices demands self-respect—and healthy self-love—which brings me to one last vital idea from Kierkegaard:
5. Practice self-compassion to have compassion for others
To love yourself in the right way and to love the neighbor correspond perfectly to one another; fundamentally, they are one and the same thing, Kierkegaard writes in Works of Love. This concept of self-love isn’t an egotistical or self-indulgent idea, but a practical and ethical one that Kierkegaard presents as a necessity for individuals to be capable of loving and supporting others.
Albert Camus later applied a similar construction, in discussing the significance of finding happiness in our pursuits while suffering still exists in the world. Camus states, “I rather have the impression that you need to be strong and happy to help people in misfortune.” In this sense, real empathy and compassionate action can’t come from a place of distress or mental exhaustion. Camus continues, “he who drags his life and succumbs beneath his own burden cannot help anyone.”
As individuals, we need to practice extending the same compassion and understanding toward ourselves that we would extend to our friends and neighbors. I suspect that in discussing this topic, Kierkegaard was reminding himself of its importance, as his journals show him to be notoriously harsh with himself. Just like any other multipotentialite—and any other individual—he struggled to make sense of his life but persisted in searching for answers.
In my opinion, Kierkegaard’s multipotentiality is one aspect of his identity that allowed him to approach his writing in such a distinctive way. He synthesized his passions and interests to create a unique approach for exploring philosophical questions and their implications for individuals’ lives.
While Kierkegaard is now viewed as the father of existentialism, I think that during his lifetime he was a curious, determined, and compassionate multipotentialite seeking to understand his own identity and help his individual readers do the same.
Your turn
Do any of these statements from Kierkegaard speak to you as a multipotentialite? Are there specific multipotentialite individuals from history that you find relatable or inspiring?
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