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.

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.

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.

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

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