how i want to live my life

This reorientation toward meaning over materialism is beginning to take root elsewhere, too.

Do you know someone who sees the world in a way that reveals new hues to you? Whose sense of self-awareness leads them to move with arresting originality, and invites you to do the same just by nature of being in their aura? It’s that quality I’m increasingly drawn to during these times when it’s all too tempting to see life in dark shades and dull... See more

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Work and joy. When it comes to my health, I am focused exclusively on the fundamentals: strength training a few times a week at home, cooking almost all of my meals, sleep, walking, writing, reading, socializing, prayer. I played the “margin game” quite a bit in my twenties — you know, debating the... See more

"Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. In Utopia, said Thoreau, each would build his own home; and then song would come back to the heart of man, as it comes to the bird when it builds its nest. If we cannot build our homes, we can at least walk and throw and run;... See more

My goal this year is to live in harmony with my sensitivity and appreciate its gifts.

We create our own reason to live, not a meaning to life. If life has no meaning, it is entirely up to us to determine how we want to live, what purpose we want to fulfill. As Jean Paul Sartre would put it, we define our existence by determining our own essence, or the things that make us us. It is also up to us to grapple with the terrors that come... See more