When we ski, our freedom can exhilarate us just as much as it can unsettle us. It encourages us to choose our own paths, while simultaneously unsettling us because we must generate our own actions, which can cause us to lose balance. In reality, we are not free to choose our own paths because we always choose options that are already present.
Sartre defined anguish as the consciousness of one’s own future in the mode of not being it. He assumed there was a sense of anguish for the future and another for the past. When we realize the ineffectiveness of a decision made in the past, this second type of anguish bursts in.
Anguish arises from the freedom we have to choose and take responsibility for those choices. From this perspective, we are always alone with our own decisions. We have the freedom to choose among the options presented to us, which can generate anxiety. What we chose was a superior alternative to all others; otherwise, we would have chosen one of them. Even in the most challenging or threatening situations, we have options. We can give up, but since we do not, we choose to face the situation.
According to Kierkegaard’s philosophy, anxiety is the reality of freedom as the possibility of possibility. If we stood at the edge of a sharp change in slope and observed its steepness, we would undoubtedly feel aversion. However, we would feel a compelling need to move forward. This feeling of anxiety is caused by the free will of having to choose between plunging down the steep decline or staying in place.
The point is that we face the obstacles ahead by practicing free skiing. In every act, we become the skiers that we are; that is, we make ourselves responsible for our decisions. This awareness of responsibility can cause us anguish, as we cannot predict a priori whether we will make the best possible decision. When doing something is forbidden, we feel the ethical responsibility to avoid doing it, even if we have the freedom to carry it out. The prospect of having to choose generates a certain level of anxiety.
We choose from a variety of possibilities, and although there may be many, we can say we are ‘forced’ to choose one possibility over another. We say we are forced to choose because we cannot not choose, since skiing itself is a constant choice.
We mentioned how anguish arises due to our awareness of the availability of these possibilities, and by choosing one, we experience frustration for those we leave aside. Furthermore, we feel anguish due to the conditioning of having to choose only one among a multitude of options. However, the skeptical skier’s anguish is worse because they constantly think about everything they have not chosen.
When skiing, we always have multiple possibilities that are constantly updated. While discussing different ones, we insist that we must consider that we are not completely free to choose, but that there is one possibility that unifies us all: falling. Therefore, to dissolve the anguish that afflicts us, it is important to occupy ourselves with our skiing, rather than pre-occupying ourselves with losing our balance.
