Tomorrow, The Practice of Being Alive: Modern Humans in Search of Ground becomes fully available. I’ve been thinking about what I most want to say before it leaves my hands and enters yours.
I spent years believing that the right answers would finally make life possible. Religion gave that expectation a structure, but leaving religion didn’t automatically undo it. There was always something else to resolve, understand, or become before I could trust myself to participate fully in my own life.
That waiting takes respectable forms. We work, fulfill our responsibilities, and become people others depend on. Meanwhile, the life we hope to inhabit keeps getting pushed beyond the next difficulty. Even the work of healing becomes another place to wait when we believe we must finish it before we are allowed to live.
I ** wrote this book** because I know something about that postponement. Through my work in existential health, I’ve also come to care deeply about the distance between keeping a life running and being present for it. Meaning, belonging, mortality, and self-trust are questions we encounter while making breakfast, loving someone, facing a loss, or deciding whether to say what we actually think.
The Practice of Being Alive explores what it means to participate in life while those questions remain open. I wanted to write something honest enough to take our difficulties seriously and useful enough to accompany us into an ordinary day.
If you have followed my writing for years, thank you for helping make this work possible. If you are finding it now, I hope this book meets you somewhere real.
Learn more about the book ** here**.
Preorder until tomorrow ** here**.
