"This has always been one of my favourite spots. Often as I stood here of a quiet evening, the sea intoning its song with deep but calm solemnity, my eye catching not a single sail on the vast surface, and only the sea framed the sky and the sky the sea, and when, too, the busy hum of life grew silent and the birds sang their vespers, then the few dear departed ones rose from the grave before me, or rather it seemed as though they were not dead. I felt so much at ease in their midst, I rested in their embrace, and I felt as though I were outside my body and floated about with them in a higher ether-- until the seagulls harsh screech reminded me that I stood alone and it all vanished before my eyes, and with heavy heart I turned back to mingle with the world's throng-- yet without forgetting such blessed moments. --I have often stood there and pondered my past life and the different circles that have had their influence upon me. And before my contempletive gaze there vanished the pettiness that so often causes offence in life, the many misunderstandings that so often separate persons of different temperament, who, if they understood one another properly, would be tied with indissoluble bonds. When it all, seen thus in perspective, presented only the larger, bolder outlines and I didn't lose myself in detail as one so often does, but saw the whole in its totality, I gained the strength to grasp things differently, to admit how often I myself had made mistakes, and to forgive the mistakes of others. --As I stood there, without depression and despondency making me see myself as an enclitic of those by whom I am usually surrounded, or without pride making me the formative principle in a small circle-- as I stood there alone and forsaken and the power of the sea and the battle of the elements reminded me of my nothingness, while the sure flight of the birds reminded me on the other hand of Christ's words, 'Not a sparrow will fall to the earth without your heavenly Father's will', I felt at once how great and yet how insignificant I am. Those two great forces, pride and humility, amicably combined. Fortunate the man for whom
this is possible every moment of his life, in whose breast these two factors have not merely settled out of court but have reached out their hands to each other and celebrated a wedding-- a marriage neither of convenience or of social unequals, but a truly quiet wedding performed in the innermost recesses of a person's heart, in the holy of holies, where few witnesses are present but everything happens before the eyes solely of
Him who alone attended that first wedding in the Garden of Eden and who blessed the pair-- a marriage that will not be barren but will have blessed fruits visible in the world to the eye of the experienced observer. For these fruits...[will] escape the attention of the masses and only a solitary researcher discovers them and rejoices in his find. His life will flow on calmly andd quietly, and he will drain neither the intoxicatign bowl of pride nor the bitter chalice of despair. He has found what that great philosopher-- who by his calculations was able to destroy the enemy's instruments of assualt-- desired but did not find: that Archimedean point from which he could lift the whole world, that point which precisesly for that reason must lie outside the world, that point outside the confines of time and space."
-July the 29th [1834?]
Papers and Journals: A Selection, Soren Kierkegaard
