how to live

You basically don’t need to worry about being too kind or too chill. If you’re the kind of person who worries that being a little more relaxed or emotionally open will destroy your whole life, you could probably stand to relax and be more emotionally open.

“People who are direct are generally in touch with themselves and their desires. People who are habitually indirect usually aren’t. This is because people who are indirect don’t have much experience with their inner world making contact with the outer world. They sit and theorize instead of saying it out loud and seeing... See more

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.

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

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I know that freedom is earned by confronting things that embarrass and trigger you, over and over again, until you are cringe-proof in your desired environment.