Lost Sunset, paper collage, 2024

We know ourselves by experience. The feeling that you’ve somehow “lost touch” with yourself indicates an impoverishment of experiencing.

At any given time, I have the choice to be active in—to be the creator of—my life, or to regress into passivity. Said differently: at any given time, I can make a choice to be responsible for my life or not.

“The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power to experience, to have impulse voices from within and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within—and make the point: This can be done…From this experiencing oneself as a cause and as a creator, then there flows naturally the feeling of responsibility, of being master of one’s own fate, of being the automobile driver rather than the passenger” (A. H. Maslow).

Don’t be someone who is responsible for the “big” things but is irresponsible about the “little” things. There are no little things. There is only the constellation of your potentialities: your talents, capacities, impulses, desires—from rudimentary to highly specialized—and your willingness to actualize them or allow them to stagnate. 

We have a nasty habit of misidentifying our wants, needs, and desires, and of looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places. 

“If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not accuse it; accuse yourself; tell yourself you are not poet enough to summon up its riches since to the creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place” (Ranier Maria Rilke). 

Within the realm of the human spirit, or psyche, or within the constellation of human potentialities, there is no unimportant place. The things you do everyday, big and small, routine and non-routine, matter. Meet those experiences as would an artist. Create. Elevate. Make beautiful. Give. Add value and meaning to your everyday life. This is what it means to live with an ethos of care. This is also part of what it means to be responsible.

When we choose the route of passivity, or when we choose to act against our own best interests, that information “registers” (Karen Horney’s term) in the unconscious. That is, it becomes part of how we know and experience ourselves. Don’t diminish the quality of your experiencing by falling victim to passivity or other aspects of your lower nature. Don’t be someone to whom everyday life doesn’t matter. Show yourself that you’re better than that.

One of the most rewarding feelings—at least, in my experience—is the feeling, “this is what I was made to do”. This feeling doesn’t necessarily come from doing satisfying work or actualizing a special talent. It’s the result of acting with care, creativeness, and love. It is the result of taking an activity—no matter how rudimentary or seemingly insignificant—and making it matter.