how to live

The concept that sits right at the heart of a sane and meaningful life, I’m increasingly convinced, is something like aliveness . It goes by other names, too, none of which quite nail it – but it’s the one thing that, so long as you navigate by it, you’ll never go too far wrong. Sometimes it feels like a subtle electrical charge behind what’s happe

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Life is, of course, just like this: You get only one shot, and it’s up to you to make the most of it by rejecting okay or even pretty good ways to allocate your time or other resources — to hunt down the opportunities to make really great bets on yourself. Do not make barely positive-value bets with your life!

Life doesn’t begin at birth. Nor at conception. Nor at some abstract marker of consciousness or legality. It begins, in earnest, at the moment of trembling recognition . When something stirs beneath reason. When you want something – or someone – without being able to explain why, and you choose to move toward it. That is the erotic decision.

You should pay special attention to the thoughts that gnaw at you despite them being against your self-interest to think.

It means making decisions that align with your aliveness, even if they offend your ego, your upbringing, your pay check.

Eros, in its ancient, Platonic sense, is the force that binds the soul to the world, that moves us toward beauty, mystery, and becoming. It is not reducible to sex, though it may include it. It is a metaphysical orientation: the decision, over and over again, to seek intensity over numbness, expansion over contraction, intimacy over control.