Plenty of young people may find Søren Kierkegaard relatable on the basis of his biography alone.
He once dug himself into debt during a personal crisis by spending too much money on books and coffee. He agonized over romance, unsure whether he was suited for marriage. He canceled his engagement—then he overthought and regretted that decision too.
Despair hounded him, as it hounds many of us. “I have just come from a party of which I was the soul: witticism flowed from my mouth, all laughed and admired me,” he wrote in his journal in 1836. “But I went (here indeed the dashes should be as long as the radius of the earth’s orbit)—————————————————————————away and wanted to shoot myself.”
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