Søren Kierkegaard never wrote the words "leap of faith." Not in Fear and Trembling (1843), the book people mean when they invoke it, and not anywhere in his journals. What he wrote about was a qualitative leap — a transition no amount of additional evidence, certainty, or time can bridge. Fear and Trembling, published under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio, is built around Abraham's journey to sacrifice Isaac: a man asked to act against every ethical standard he holds, with no proof the outcome will be anything but catastrophe. A year later, in The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Kierkegaard — writing as Vigilius Haufniensis — described anxiety as "the dizziness of freedom": the vertigo that appears not before a decision, but at the moment you realise how much is actually open to you, and that it doesn't switch off once you've chosen. Kierkegaard's real subject was never blind faith as a jump into the void. It was the fact that some commitments can't wait for certainty, because certainty was never coming.
That correction matters because "leap of faith" has quietly become a comfort phrase. Close your eyes, jump, and something catches you. It implies the leap is the whole event — that once you commit, the uncertainty resolves and you land somewhere solid. Kierkegaard never made that claim. This is where the cliché stops being useful and the actual idea gets interesting.
Nothing Matters. Now What? runs into the same problem from a different direction, without ever using Kierkegaard's name. It spends a long stretch on people who wait for a feeling of readiness before committing to anything — a relationship, a piece of work, a version of themselves — and never get it, because that feeling was never coming: "The fantasy of discovered meaning flatters people because it sounds noble. It makes life seem like a sacred scavenger hunt. It also leaves too many people trapped in hesitation, waiting for something undeniable enough to commit to. That feeling may never come. Commit anyway — not blindly, not stupidly, but honestly." That's not a call to leap without thought. It's a description of what committing actually requires: doing it without the reassurance you were hoping to get first.
Here's the part both the meme and most Kierkegaard summaries skip. A leap is a single event — Abraham's hand is either raised or it isn't — but nobody builds a life out of one gesture. The leap gets someone off the fence. It doesn't keep them off it. People treat the jump as the hard part: the nerve required, the one decisive instant. Usually it's the easier part, because it only has to happen once and it comes with its own adrenaline. The hard part is Tuesday — the version of the commitment with no ceremony, no audience, no sense of occasion, just the same decision made again quietly, once the original nerve has worn off and nothing is watching. A relationship survives on the ten thousand ordinary returns to it, not the proposal. A piece of work survives on the days you show up without inspiration, not the day you decided to start it.
Nothing Matters. Now What? makes this same point without borrowing Kierkegaard's vocabulary: "A chosen life begins with repeated action, not dramatic insight. What you can practise matters more than what you can describe." Put the two together and the correction to the popular cliché becomes obvious. The leap is necessary. It is not sufficient. A person can leap and still build nothing, if the leap is treated as the whole achievement rather than the opening move.
That's the actual weight in Kierkegaard's Abraham story, stripped of the theology. Not "trust blindly and it will work out." Closer to: the decision made under uncertainty is real and it counts, but it buys you nothing on its own. Your subsequent behaviour is the only thing that tells you — and anyone else — whether it was ever a real commitment. A value nobody returns to was never really chosen. It was said out loud once, in a moment that felt significant, and abandoned the first time it stopped feeling that way.
This shows up anywhere a decision gets treated as self-validating. Quitting a job to build something of your own is a leap. So is ending a relationship that no longer fits, or admitting a belief you built an identity on doesn't survive scrutiny. The leap tends to be loud — a resignation, a difficult conversation, an announcement people notice. What happens in the six ordinary months after it is quiet, and that's what actually decides whether the leap meant anything. Nobody keeps asking how the leap went. They watch what you're still doing a year later, usually without saying so.
The leap gets you off the fence. Repetition is what keeps you off it.
Nothing Matters. Now What? explores what it actually takes to build a life on commitments made without certainty — you can find it here.