Anxiety arises when the individual becomes aware of freedom. Yet freedom, at the very moment we experience it, fills us with anxiety through the bewildering multiplicity of its possibilities. The open future, like the nothingness of death, is an unknown abyss. In our attempt to stabilise ourselves, frightened of falling, we stare downward and grasp at anything solid we can find—possessions, money, food, drink, other people. But we learn how to be anxious only when we let go of these things and see what happens when we fall.

This is the risk every human being must undergo:
for whoever learns to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.

“Søren Kierkegaard”