Anxiety is the moment: that's the phrase from Kierkegaard W. copied into his notebook. Anxiety is the Oeiblikket, the eyeblink, the moment: We have to understand what this means!
The key, of course, lies in the way we exist in time. Everything is about time!, W. says. There is the time that passes – this moment, then that – which we merely endure, which merely carries us along. Then there is that time touched by eternity, according to Kierkegaard, in which past, present and future assume their true role as phases in our development.
In the moment, in time touched by eternity, our relation to time deepens. We must learn to deepen and grow in time, W. says. We must learn not merely to persist in time, but to exist temporally, living towards a future that we earn by our deepening, earned by our growth.
That's what W.'s trying to achieve, he says. That's what he's been searching for, as he works each morning, before dawn. To be carried along by the propitiousness of work! To be borne along by a sacred task … No, by sacredness as a task, like a waterwheel turning in glinting water … What idea do we have of that? What of sustained and patient labour, without thought of reward?
We need fear anxiety only when we fail our humility; when we have yet to achieve self-realisation. But when we discover, through our patience, the ability to determine ourselves, to liberate our possibilities – when we separate petty concerns from profound ones?
Then our anxiety will no longer be called anxiety. Then the eternal bows down from the sky to kiss our forehead. Grace: is that the name for what anxiety becomes? God: is that a name for the eternal?
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