Why Does Heidegger Claim That Everydayness is a Concealed Anxiety?

In order to understand what Heidegger means by everydayness is a concealed anxiety,

it is essential to distinguish anxiety from another mood he examines: fear. In his

writings in Being and Time, Heidegger provides a phenomenology of fear. He

proposed that fear is always directed to something threatening, and so has an object. I

can imagine that I am fearful of spiders, and I became frightened upon seeing one in

the bath, then my friend comes along and removes the offending arachnid, and my

fear is gone. However, with anxiety, it is a whole different scenario. Fear is directed

to something particular and definite, while anxiety is anxious about nothing in

particular and is indefinite. It is experienced in the face of something wholly

indefinite and indeterminate. For this reason, Heidegger insists anxiety is, "nothing

and nowhere." 1

The nature of human existence is such that it is structured as a being-in-the-world.

The implication is that human existence is involved in the world, amid beings as a

whole, making up its everydayness or busy daily schedules such as work, life,

hobbies, recreation, and so forth., and it understands itself in terms of these beings.

What this understanding means is that a musician or a music lover can understand

himself better using how a particular musical instrument relates to him. In anxiety,

this involvement in worldly things such as hobbies and recreation slips away and fails

to serve the same purpose it used to which is to bring comfort but instead begins to

recede, and the familiar comfort of everydayness slips away. It is with this receding

and slipping away that the mood anxiety which has once remained concealed in

1 Heidegger Martin. (1962). Being and Time. P. 174

everydayness and daily activities which provided comfort is made manifest because

the being has lost interest in the daily activities and instead turned to nothing.