Research Notebook
What internal and environmental conditions allow humans to experience sustained vitality and genuine presence in their everyday lives?
Research Evolution
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What does it actually mean to feel alive?
Trace
Play with attention
Themes
Sources
How games make life better
Living Well: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Eudaimonia
On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being
Art and an Experience
Field Notes
I used to think progress meant adding another log to the fire.
Read another paper. Build another feature. Write another article. Go to another event.
Always more fuel.
But lately, I’ve been wondering if that’s an incomplete picture.
Some days the fire doesn’t need another log.
It needs someone to sit beside it.
To rearrange the embers.
To clear away the ash.
To notice which pieces are still glowing.
I’m beginning to wonder if every practice has its own fire.
Relationships. Research. Art. Health.
Maybe the question isn’t:
“What did I accomplish today?”
Maybe it’s:
“How did I tend the fire today?”
Some people walk because they enjoy it. Some walk because they have to.
The action is the same. The encounter isn’t.
I wonder how our constraints shape the way we encounter the world. We often think of constraints as things that limit us.
But I wonder if they also shape the way we encounter the world.
If you walk because you have no choice, do you notice different things than someone who walks for pleasure?
I smiled at three strangers today.
Three women. 😁
I had walked out feeling strangely intimidated by the energy around me. Then, somewhere along the walk, that feeling softened. I happened to make eye contact with someone, smiled, and they smiled back.
It happened three times.
And I walked away feeling oddly… expanded.
Now I’m wondering—
Did I feel good simply because I had set out wanting to smile at strangers and actually did it?
Or is there something about the act of smiling itself that changes the person doing the smiling just a little bit?