Sublime

Of all psychology’s sins, the most mortal is its neglect of beauty. There is, after all, something quite beautiful about a life. But you would not think so from reading psychology books.

Emotional depth and resilience depend on active engagement with others and with our own feelings. Mental acuity diminishes in the absence of ongoing intellectual challenge. Spiritual energy capacity depends on regularly revisiting our deepest values and holding ourselves accountable in our behavior.

my ultimate goals (What do you want to offer the world?), my skills (What are you doing when you feel most alive?), and my schedule (How exactly do you fill your days?).

Now imagine this isn’t an experiment but the shape of a life: instead of waiting for a ball to come your way in a silly game of catch, you’re waiting for anyone to call or drop by or speak your name. You can’t even express it, but you’re hungering for some sign that you are known.

In her remarkable and orientating book A Life of One’s Own – a book really about how we might sustain our aliveness: the aliveness, the being enlivened, that is the true antidote to giving up – the artist and psychoanalyst Marion Milner describes her attempt to ‘decide what [her] aim in life was’:

Augustine is our contemporary. He has directly and indirectly shaped the way we understand our pursuits, the call to authenticity.