It was Kierkegaard, for better or worse, who got me started into the journey of studying philosophy. It was a melancholic time, akin to what the alchemists called the stage of the nigredo or “blackening,” but it was also a time of the rediscovery of love. I remember pouring over Kierkegaard’s journals in particular, for here was a strong sense that philosophy was not just another academic discipline but that it stemmed from the very heart of existence. I related very much to Kierkegaard’s agonizing decision to break his engagement with the love of his life Regine Olsen, whom he was set to marry in 1841. Passages such as these touched my own situation at the time:

“Oh blind God of Love! You who see into our hidden recesses, will you reveal love to me? Am I to hold you in my arms –or DO YOU ORDER ME TO BE ON MY WAY? ”