The fifth of May is a holiday that honors the date of the Mexican army's May 5, 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla, during the Franco-Mexican War.
Happy Cinco de Mayo to those who celebrate this day, through parades, food, music, folkloric dancing and/or battle reenactments. 🥳
Today, is also the birthday of one of the few philosophers that marked me as an impressionable teenager/ poet-in-the-making whom I still return to, today, for sustenance.
Initially, Kierkegaard's books 'reached out' to me, too, over the years as friends/guides when I needed them, first philosophically, then, spiritually. Here's a sampling of his voice and mission:
When around one everything has become silent, solemn as a clear, starlit night, when the soul comes to be alone in the whole world, then before one there appears, not an extraordinary human being, but the eternal power itself, then the heavens open, and the I chooses itself or, more correctly, receives itself.
Then the personality receives the accolade of knighthood that ennobles it for an eternity.
It was intelligence and nothing else that had to be opposed. Presumably that is why I who had the job was armed with an immense intelligence.
[Religiously], one does not proceed from the simple in order then to become interesting, witty, profound, a poet, a philosopher.
No, it is just the opposite; here one begins and then becomes more and more simple.
I think the mark of a profound and dynamic thinker, like Kierkegaard, is that they can accompany us throughout life's journey and speak to us, differently, at various stages of it.
Happy Birthday, Great Dane, and I hope I might have whet your appetite to discover his work for yourself. 🙏🏼✨
