Middle Season #3 - 2026

 

Now I can see the moon!

 

Barn’s burnt down

Now I can see

the moon!

Mizuta Masahide (1657–1723):

Homo faber v Homo viator

 

Yes, I’m familiar with both terms - they’re Latin philosophical concepts that capture different visions of human nature and purpose.

**Homo faber** means “man the maker” or “man the craftsman.” This concept emphasizes humans as tool-makers and builders who shape their world through work, technology, and creative production. It’s been used by thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Max Scheler to describe humanity’s capacity to transform nature and create culture through labor and fabrication. The term highlights our practical, productive dimension.

**Homo viator** means “man the traveler” or “man the wayfarer.” This concept, particularly associated with the Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel, presents human existence as a journey or pilgrimage. It emphasizes that we’re essentially travelers - not settled or complete, but always in movement toward something beyond ourselves. Marcel contrasted this with “homo faber,” arguing that viewing humans merely as makers or problem-solvers misses our spiritual dimension and our orientation toward transcendence.

The two terms represent a fascinating tension: are we primarily defined by what we make and do in the world (homo faber), or by our existential journey and quest for meaning (homo viator)? Of course, these aren’t mutually exclusive - we’re both makers and seekers - but the emphasis matters for how we understand human flourishing.

Are you exploring these concepts for a particular reason, or interested in how they relate to something specific?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Yes, there’s a whole family of these “homo” formulations that philosophers, anthropologists, and other thinkers have proposed. Here are some notable ones:

**Homo sapiens** (“wise man” or “knowing man”) - the biological classification emphasizing reason and knowledge as our defining trait.

**Homo ludens** (“playing man”) - coined by Johan Huizinga, this emphasizes play, game-playing, and creative spontaneity as fundamental to human culture and civilization, not just work or reason.

**Homo economicus** (“economic man”) - a model from economics depicting humans as rational, self-interested actors who make decisions to maximize utility. Often critiqued as overly reductive.

**Homo religiosus** (“religious man”) - used by Mircea Eliade and others to emphasize the universal human orientation toward the sacred and transcendent.

**Homo narrans** (“storytelling man”) - highlights our nature as narrative-creating beings who understand ourselves and the world through stories.

**Homo symbolicus** (“symbolic man”) - emphasizes our unique capacity to create and use symbols, language, and abstract representations.

**Homo consumens** (“consuming man”) - a critical term pointing to modern consumer culture and the reduction of human identity to consumption patterns.

**Homo politicus** (“political man”) - drawing on Aristotle’s idea that humans are naturally political animals who find fulfillment in civic life.

Each term isn’t just descriptive - it carries normative weight about what matters most in human life. The one you emphasize shapes your ethics, politics, and vision of the good life.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

For Thich Nhat Hanh, I’d suggest **Homo presens** (“present man”) or **Homo interens** (“interbeing man”).

**Homo presens** captures his central teaching about mindfulness - that our essential task is to be fully present to each moment. “The present moment is the only moment available to us, and it is the door to all moments” is quintessentially his. Whether washing dishes, drinking tea, or breathing, the practice is always about arriving fully in the now.

**Homo interens** (from his neologism “interbeing”) might be even more distinctive to his thought. This captures his insight that we don’t exist as separate, isolated selves but only in relationship - we “inter-are” with everything else. When you look deeply at a sheet of paper, he’d say, you see the cloud that became rain for the tree, the logger, the sun, everything. Human purpose, then, isn’t individual enlightenment but recognizing and honoring our fundamental interconnectedness.

There’s also something to be said for **Homo compatiens** (“compassionate man” or “suffering-with man”), since his engaged Buddhism insists we can’t separate personal peace from collective suffering - we practice not to escape the world but to transform it through compassionate presence.

The beautiful thing about Thich Nhat Hanh is how these dimensions weave together: presence enables us to see interbeing, which naturally flowers into compassion.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

What a wonderful thought experiment! Let me consider what might capture the essence of each thinker:

**Thoreau: Homo attentus** (“attentive man”) or perhaps **Homo deliberatus** (“deliberate man”). Thoreau’s project was fundamentally about attention - really seeing the natural world, but also attending carefully to how one lives. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately” captures this perfectly. He wasn’t just observing nature; he was practicing a kind of disciplined wakefulness to life itself. Alternatively, **Homo solivagus** (“solitary wanderer”) might work, given his emphasis on solitude and walking as modes of knowing.

**Emerson: Homo transcendens** (“transcending man”) or **Homo intuitans** (“intuiting man”). Emerson believed in our capacity to transcend mere empirical understanding and connect directly with the Over-Soul, the divine principle flowing through all things. His emphasis on self-reliance and intuition over tradition suggests humans are fundamentally meant to reach beyond the merely given and trust their own divine spark.

**Kimmerer: Homo reciprocans** (“reciprocating man”) or **Homo gratians** (“grateful man”). Kimmerer’s work centers on reciprocity, gift exchange, and gratitude as the proper relationship between humans and the living world. We’re not just observers or even stewards, but partners in an ongoing cycle of giving and receiving. Her Indigenous science framework emphasizes that our purpose is participation in mutually beneficial relationships with all living beings.

What do you think - do any of these resonate with how you read them?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

For our current condition, I’d propose **Homo distractus** (“distracted man”) or **Homo dispersus** (“dispersed/scattered man”).

**Homo distractus** captures the literal state - constantly pulled away from presence, from depth, from anything resembling sustained attention. We’re fragmented across notifications, feeds, tabs, the infinite scroll. The term has a nice tension with *Homo attentus* too.

But I’m also drawn to **Homo stupefactus** (“stunned/stupefied man”) - which carries both the sense of being dazed and the root meaning of being “struck senseless.” Neil Postman’s “amusing ourselves to death” fits here: we’re not just distracted but actively numbed, entertained into a kind of stupor where we can’t tell signal from noise, where outrage and amusement blur together.

Or perhaps **Homo captivus** (“captive man”) - because it’s not just that we’re distracted; we’re *captured*. Our attention has been engineered, harvested, monetized. We’re not freely wandering away from presence - we’re being deliberately held in patterns designed to keep us scrolling, clicking, consuming.

There’s something tragic about the distance between *Homo viator* (the pilgrim on a meaningful journey) and *Homo distractus* (unable to stay on any path long enough to arrive anywhere). Or between *Homo presens* and *Homo captivus* - the difference between freedom in presence and captivity in perpetual elsewhere.

Which framing resonates most with how you experience it?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I love this as a developmental progression - it has a real psychological and spiritual logic to it. Let me try mapping homo phrases onto those stages:

**Stage 1: Turning off** - **Homo abstinens** (“abstaining man”) or **Homo declinans** (“declining/turning away man”). This is the necessary negation, the withdrawal from capture. You have to first refuse the perpetual stimulation before anything else can happen.

**Stage 2: Tuning in** - **Homo attentus** (“attentive man”). Once you’ve created space through withdrawal, you can begin actually attending - to your breath, your body, the tree outside, the quality of light. This is Thoreau’s deliberateness coming online.

**Stage 3: Engaging productively** - **Homo faber** (back to “making man”) or **Homo agens** (“acting man”). Now attention becomes directed action. You’re not just present but creating, building, working meaningfully in the world. The contemplative deepens into the active.

**Stage 4: Living reciprocally/interconnectedly** - **Homo reciprocans** or **Homo interens**. This is where Kimmerer and Thich Nhat Hanh converge - you’re not just acting *on* the world but participating *with* it, recognizing yourself as part of the web of relationships, giving and receiving, seeing interbeing.

There’s something beautiful about this arc: from captivity to freedom, from distraction to attention, from attention to meaningful work, from work to participation in something larger than yourself. Each stage enables the next, but you can’t skip steps.

Does this match what you’re envisioning?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Ah yes - this is crucial. The meaning has to be *immanent*, found in the practice itself, not deferred to some transcendent payoff. No cosmic validation, no ultimate escape hatch.

This makes **Homo reciprocans** and **Homo interens** even more vital for that final stage, because the meaning comes from the relationships themselves, not from what they earn you. Kimmerer’s gift economy isn’t about accumulating karmic credits - it’s about the inherent rightness of reciprocity. The strawberries taste sweeter when you’ve thanked them, not because thanks gets you into heaven but because gratitude deepens participation.

Similarly, Thich Nhat Hanh’s interbeing isn’t actually about reaching nirvana (despite Buddhist framing) - it’s about recognizing what’s already true. You wash the dishes to wash the dishes. You’re present because presence is the only thing that’s real, not because it gets you somewhere else.

Maybe that’s why the progression you’re describing matters so much:

**Homo abstinens** → stepping away from false promises (consumer satisfaction, digital connection, future rewards)

**Homo attentus** → discovering what’s actually here

**Homo faber/agens** → making meaning through engaged work in the world

**Homo reciprocans/interens** → finding sufficiency in mutual participation

The “lake house retirement” is just another form of *Homo captivus* really - enslaved to a deferred reward that keeps you tolerating alienation now.

What you’re describing is more like: meaning is here, in attention and reciprocity, or it’s nowhere. The practice *is* the arrival.

Does that track with what you’re after?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Absolutely - this is a crucial addition. **Homo attentus** isn’t just passively noticing what’s out there, but actively discovering your own authentic preferences, responses, delights. What actually moves *you*, not what you’re supposed to like or what the algorithm tells you you like.

This connects to what artists like David Bayles and Ted Orland talk about in *Art & Fear* - that the artist’s real work is finding their own voice, their own vision. But you’re right that this isn’t special to artists. It’s fundamental human work that our current condition (Homo distractus/captivus) actively prevents.

When you’re perpetually distracted or captured, you never develop genuine taste - you just have preferences shaped by whatever’s been optimizing for your engagement. You don’t know if you actually like something or if you’ve just been conditioned to click on it.

So maybe **Homo attentus** has two dimensions:

- Attention *outward*: really seeing what’s there (Thoreau watching the ice melt)

- Attention *inward*: discovering your own genuine response (Do I actually love this? Does this bore me? What quickens my pulse?)

This self-knowledge then becomes essential for **Homo faber/agens** - you can’t engage productively if you don’t know what calls to you, what work feels alive rather than obligatory.

And it makes the progression even more anti-systemic: capitalism and digital platforms need you NOT to know what you actually want. They need your desires malleable, exploitable.

Is this the kind of self-discovery you mean?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Enjoy the endless work

 James Clear

Work is endless. Exercise is endless. Parenting is endless. Same with marriage, writing, investing, creating, and more. You get to choose the parts of your life, but many of the important things in life cannot be “finished.”

Do not approach an endless game with a finite mindset. The objective is not to be done, but to settle into a daily lifestyle you can sustain and that allows you to make daily progress on the areas that matter.

Embrace the fact that life is continual and look for ways to enjoy the daily practice.

*On Flourishing: Growth Practices

---

🌌 Layer 1 — Flourishing Qualities

(Orientation / North Star)
Who you are becoming.
The inner ecology.
Timeless, philosophical, identity-level.

---

🌿 Layer 2 — Lived Rhythms

(Stabilizers / Trellis)
What you already do that keeps you in range of that life.
Repetitive, embodied, regulating.

These are the roots and soil.

Layer 3 — Edge Practices

(Growth edge / Becoming / The Frontier)
Not stable yet. Slightly scary. Not automatic.
These stretch identity.

This is the category you just named.

• Naikan reflection

• Volunteering

• “Risky” steps toward a post-retirement life

These are not maintenance practices.
They are evolution practices.

---

The feeling-tone difference is important:

Layer	Emotional Tone	Function
Flourishing Qualities	Inspiring, orienting	Meaning
Lived Rhythms	Grounding, regulating	Stability
Edge Practices	Vulnerable, uncertain, alive	Growth

You don’t live at the edge all the time.
That leads to burnout or self-improvement obsession.

You don’t only live in rhythms either.
That leads to stagnation.

Flourishing comes from:
Stable base + gentle frontier

You’re intuitively building that structure.

---

Why this third list matters especially now (life stage-wise)

You’re not in accumulation mode anymore.
You’re in transition-from-identity-to-legacy mode (very Jung / Hollis territory).

Edge practices at this stage are about:

• Loosening old professional identity

• Expanding relational identity

• Practicing usefulness beyond role

• Letting life get bigger than “my competence”

That’s why volunteering and Naikan show up. They decentralize the self.

---

The key with this third list:

It cannot be treated like the second list.

These are not daily habits.
They are seasonal or periodic courage acts.

Think:

• One Naikan cycle

• One volunteer commitment

• One uncomfortable-but-alive step per season

This is frontier living, not routine.

---

If we name them cleanly:

1. Compass — What matters

2. Rituals — What keeps me steady

3. Edges — What stretches who I am

That’s a whole human life architecture.

*Book - Chapter 1 - an American Sadness

 

PART I — REORIENTING: SEEING THE WORLD AS ALIVE AND ARRIVING

(From management → encounter)

---

Chapter 1 — The Life That Slips Past

Bold question: What if the problem isn’t that life is too full, but that we are rarely present for it?

• Optimization vs aliveness

• Productivity mind vs presence mind

• The cost of living in “getting things done” mode

• “Why do capable, successful people still feel adrift?”

Companions:

• Neil Postman

• Jenny Odell

• Jon Kabat-Zinn

• DFW

DFw From Salon on Infinite Jest

The sadness that the book is about, and that I was going through, was a real American type of sadness. I was white, upper-middle-class, obscenely well-educated, had had way more career success than I could have legitimately hoped for and was sort of adrift. A lot of my friends were the same way. Some of them were deeply into drugs, others were unbelievable workaholics. Some were going to singles bars every night. You could see it played out in 20 different ways, but it’s the same thing.

DFW shows:  What happens when attention is captured.; Your book shows:  What becomes possible when attention is reclaimed.

That quote names the problem your entire book responds to:

• outward success, stimulation everywhere, options, mobility, achievement, and yet… drift, compulsion, anesthesia, quiet despair

 What happens when a person has built a life but not a way of being.    You’re not writing: “Here are wholesome habits.”  You’re writing:  “Here is why so many capable, educated, functioning people feel vaguely lost, restless, and over-stimulated.”

Chapter 1 is about:

• The American sadness of abundance

• Endless stimulation without depth, Achievement without arrival, Choice without orientation, Entertainment as sedation, Busyness as avoidance

This is the pre-attention life.
The life where the world cannot be met because the mind is never still enough.

DFW = witness to the cost. You = offering a different way to live inside the same culture.

** This American Sadness**

DFW captures a particular modern feeling in quotation above.  I'd never heard it as "sadness" before.  Adrift, Lonely.  

The book All Shining Things names it, says that it's a lack of meaning guiding us.  Authors reference Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love.  

Jeff Tweedy says in a podcast that we often numb it. Anesthesize it 

The title of "Infinite Jest" comes from a TV show so entertaining that it turns the viewer into a drooling halfwit.  DFW pointing to the increasing presence of ads and entertainment in modern life.  

I’ve always thought of myself as a realist. I can remember fighting with my professors about it in grad school. The world that I live in consists of 250 advertisements a day and any number of unbelievably entertaining options, most of which are subsidized by corporations that want to sell me things. The whole way that the world acts on my nerve endings is bound up with stuff that the guys with leather patches on their elbows would consider pop or trivial or ephemeral.

 Neal Postman here from Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Maybe Postman is about what it's doing to us politically.  

What is our state: entertained, lonely, sad.  Excited about the next episode dropping.  The next playoff game.  My stepson Henry moves from screen to screen, often stating factoid he's just heard on YouTube videos. "Mom! Did you hear that the new Steelers coach is....?"  "Both quarterbacks today had zero interceptions and over 330 yards."

Often enough in my experience, in the department office, I hear "It's just too much."

Nick Cave caught my attention calling it "keeping the devil in its hole" By that I take it that there are some activities that keep the mind okay.  And also that it's a continuing practice.  The devil is always trying to come out of his hole for us.

Doing Things We Don’t Necessarily Want to Do

 T Bone Burnett  from PBS NewsHour 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/t-bone-burnett-on-making-music-and-fighting-surveillance-capitalism

Companies like Facebook shouldn't be allowed to behave like digital gangsters.

We all have strings attached to us now. Everywhere we go, we have different technologies zeroing in on us and following us, tracing us, tracking us, predicting what we're going to do, and trying to actually move us into doing things that we don't necessarily want to do.

*On Flourishing: Mechanisms that Create a Life Well Lived

What are some activities/disciplines that seem to align with these things or support these things?

1. Going for a walk
2. Going for a run, then sitting on a bench
3. Keeping a travelogue
4. Writing a daily haiku
5. Daily coffee with your love (daily X with your love)

 love this turn. You’re moving from values of flourishing → lived rhythms of a day. That’s a big shift, and it’s a good one.

Here’s the flavor difference I see:

---

🌿 Your first list = Conditions of a flourishing life

It’s philosophical, orienting, almost like a compass.

It answers:

What kind of human am I trying to be in the world?

It’s about:

• stance

• posture

• relationship to experience

• relationship to growth

• relationship to others

It’s identity-level and directional.

---

🚶 Your second list = Mechanisms that quietly shape that human

This one answers:

What do I actually do on a Tuesday that nudges me toward that way of being?

It’s not conceptual.
It’s ritual, rhythm, embodiment, repetition.

The first list is ecology.
The second list is daily weather.

The first list says:

“Be a person who notices.”

The second list says:

“Walk every day so noticing has a place to happen.”

---

The second list is powerful because it works indirectly

None of your activities say:

• “Be grateful”

• “Be open”

• “Be connected”

But they produce the conditions where those things happen naturally.

That’s psychologically sophisticated.

You’re not trying to force virtues.
You’re designing situations where they arise.

---

Let’s look at the ones you shared:

🚶 Daily walk

Supports:

• Slowing the brain

• Noticing

• Openness to teachers (the world teaches on foot)

• Regulation of mood (so gratitude and connection are more possible)

This is a baseline reset practice.

---

🏃 Run → sit on a bench

This one is sneakily brilliant.

You’re using physiology to get to receptivity.

Effort → endorphins → stillness → openness

That directly supports:

• Slowing

• Noticing

• “Enoughness” (body-satisfaction softens craving)

• Receptivity

It’s like a somatic doorway to contemplation.

---

📓 Keeping a “travelogue of ordinary life”

This one might be the crown jewel.

It trains:

• Noticing

• Wonder

• Anti-algorithm perception

• Seeing teachers everywhere

• Reframing the familiar as worthy

This is basically:

Training the mind to treat life as pilgrimage instead of commute.

Huge flourishing move.

---

🍃 Daily haiku

Of course this fits your “make something every day” thread you’ve been living with for a while.

This supports:

• Noticing

• Making with your hands (language-hands)

• Skill building

• Slowing

• Enoughness (small form, small beauty)

Haiku is the opposite of striving culture.

---

☕ Daily coffee with your love

This one grounds everything.

Supports:

• Connection

• Attention

• Caretaking (of the relationship)

• Gratitude

• Enoughness

It says:

Flourishing is relational, not self-optimization.

That’s mature.

---

So the difference in flavor, in one line:

List 1 = Ways of being
List 2 = Repeated situations that make those ways of being more likely

Or even:

First List	Second List
Philosophical	Behavioral
Direction	Structure
Compass	Trail
Who you are becoming	What you actually do
Inner posture	Outer rhythm

---

Other activities that match your ecosystem

Not as obligations — just things that fit the logic of what you’re already doing:

🌅 1. A daily “threshold pause”

One moment where you stop before entering something (car, classroom, house) and take one breath.

Supports:

• Slowing

• Noticing

• Receptivity
  Tiny, but rewires the day from automatic → intentional.

---

✍️ 2. Copying a passage by hand

A paragraph from a book you respect.

Supports:

• Receptivity to teachers

• Skill

• Slowing

• Embodiment

Very old-school, very powerful.

---

🌳 3. Caring for one small physical place

Desk, garden bed, sink, corner of a room.

Supports:

• Caretaking

• Contribution

• Embodied agency

• “Enoughness” (this small sphere is enough)

---

🎧 4. Listening to one song with full attention

No multitasking.

Supports:

• Anti-algorithm taste formation

• Noticing

• Presence

• Reclaiming attention

---

🧍 5. One deliberate moment of doing nothing

Not scrolling. Not meditating. Just sitting.

Supports:

• Enoughness

• Slowing

• Nervous system settling

• Non-striving

Very Pema-coded.

---

What’s beautiful is this:

You’re not building a system to improve yourself.

You’re building a life that makes it easier to be awake

*ChatGPT prompt for helping me sort ideas

 I’m working on a book about preparing attention so we can meet a living, unfolding world and participate in it.

The through-line is: Attention → Encounter → Gratitude → Reciprocity → Participation.

The book has three parts:

PART I — Reorienting: Seeing the World as Alive and Arriving

1. The Life That Slips Past (optimization vs aliveness)

2. Learning What You Actually Like (recovering real desire)

3. Slowing Down Enough to Be Here (attention diet, subtraction)

4. The Practice of Noticing (attention as participation)

5. Enough: The Ground Beneath Striving (sufficiency)

6. Peace Is the Way (how we do things matters)

PART II — Rhythms: Daily Practices That Prepare Us for Encounter
7. Walk Your Way Into a Wider Mind
8. Effort, Then Receptivity (body → openness)
9. Living as Though You Are Traveling (travel mindset, daily life as pilgrimage)
10. Making Something From What Appears (small creative acts, driftwood metaphor)
11. Rituals of Attention, Care, and Reciprocity (relationships, tending, being “downstream”)

PART III — Responding: When Life Asks Something of Us
12. Becoming Available (Naikan, service, gentle risk, homo viator)

Here’s a new idea I’m considering:
[PASTE IDEA HERE]

Help me:

1. Identify which chapter it best fits (or if it bridges chapters).

2. Decide whether it functions as orientation, rhythm, or edge.

3. Shape it into a guiding question in the book’s tone.

4. Note any thinkers it resonates with.

*On Fourishing: NEW structure

We care for attention not to feel better, but to become available to a world that is still arriving. 

We care for attention so we can meet a living world — and participate in it.

BOOK OUTLINE — Learning to Meet the World

---

PART I — REORIENTING: SEEING THE WORLD AS ALIVE AND ARRIVING

(From management → encounter)

---

Chapter 1 — The Life That Slips Past

Bold question: What if the problem isn’t that life is too full, but that we are rarely present for it?

• Optimization vs aliveness

• Productivity mind vs presence mind

• The cost of living in “getting things done” mode

Companions:

• Neil Postman

• Jenny Odell

• Jon Kabat-Zinn

---

Chapter 2 — Learning What You Actually Like

Bold question: How do we tell the difference between what we’re trained to want and what truly nourishes us?

• Algorithmic desire vs lived desire

• Appetite vs nourishment

• Recovering taste and agency of attention

Companions:

• Jenny Odell

• James Hollis

• Thich Nhat Hanh

---

Chapter 3 — Slowing Down Enough to Be Here

Bold question: What becomes visible when the nervous system is no longer rushing?

• Speed, stimulation, doomscrolling

• Slowness as perceptual recovery

• Subtraction and the “attention diet”

Companions:

• Jon Kabat-Zinn

• Thich Nhat Hanh

• Pema Chödrön

---

Chapter 4 — The Practice of Noticing

Bold question: What if noticing is the root of love, art, gratitude, and wisdom?

• Noticing as foundational human capacity

• Guarding the gate of attention

• Attention as participation in reality

Companions:

• Mary Oliver (spiritually)

• Jon Kabat-Zinn

• Robin Wall Kimmerer

---

Chapter 5 — Enough: The Ground Beneath Striving

Bold question: What changes when we let this moment be sufficient?

• “It is enough”

• Scarcity vs sufficiency

• How not-enough blocks encounter

Companions:

• Pema Chödrön

• Thich Nhat Hanh

• Norman Fischer

---

Chapter 6 — Peace Is the Way

Bold question: Can we do ordinary things without being at war with the moment?

• Inner tone of action

• Non-striving effort

• Acting without inner aggression

Companions:

• Thich Nhat Hanh

• Jon Kabat-Zinn

• Carl Rogers

---

PART II — RHYTHMS: TRAINING OURSELVES TO MEET WHAT ARRIVES

(Daily life as preparation for encounter)

---

Chapter 7 — Walk Your Way Into a Wider Mind

Bold question: What kind of mind grows at the speed of walking?

• Walking and perception

• The world as teacher

• Embodied attention

Companions:

• Thich Nhat Hanh

• Rebecca Solnit

• Wordsworth (light touch)

---

Chapter 8 — Effort, Then Receptivity

Bold question: How can the body help us soften into awareness?

• Run → bench experience

• Physiology and openness

• Effort as doorway to stillness

Companions:

• Jon Kabat-Zinn

• Norman Fischer

---

Chapter 9 — Living as Though You Are Traveling

Bold question: What happens when we treat ordinary life as a journey rather than a routine?

• Travel mindset

• Daily life travelogue

• Curiosity, humility, openness

Companions:

• Gabriel Marcel (homo viator)

• Jenny Odell

• Pico Iyer (tone-wise)

---

Chapter 10 — Making Something From What Appears

Bold question: How do we respond creatively to what the day gives us?

• Haiku and small making

• Driftwood and shells metaphor

• Creation as participation, not performance

Companions:

• Bashō

• Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Joy Harjo

---

Chapter 11 — Rituals of Attention, Care, and Reciprocity

Bold question: What do we owe a world that continually sustains us?

• Coffee rituals, tending spaces

• Care as daily participation

• Living in reciprocity

• Awareness of being “downstream” of others

Companions:

• Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Wendell Berry

• Thich Nhat Hanh

---

PART III — RESPONDING: WHEN LIFE ASKS SOMETHING OF US

(Edges, service, becoming)

---

Chapter 12 — Becoming Available

Bold question: If we truly felt how supported we are, how might we begin to give ourselves in return?

• Naikan reflection

• Volunteering

• Gentle risks toward the next life

• Homo viator — we are still traveling

Companions:

• Gabriel Marcel

• Robin Wall Kimmerer

• James Hollis

• Carl Rogers

---

The arc of the whole book:

Wake up attention → Meet the world → Receive it → Participate in its ongoing life

*On Flourishing: Conditions for a Life Well Lived

What are some things that seem to promote flourishing (in my experience)?

1. Knowing what you like - not what the algorithm tells you that you like (Learning the difference between appetite and conditioning)
2. Slowing down the brain - meditation, stopping, 
3. Practicing Noticing
4. Practicing Gratitude - for those who support you (known and unknown) for the amenities and pleasures of life, for teachers 
5. Heading Outside for an Adventure; Exploring the World
6. Building a Skill - working on something that's challenging for you
7. Making something with your hands - even if you're not good at it
8. Making Connections with others (being authentic, gift giving, real attention)
9. Being a Caretaker - garden, cleaning, loved on
10. Being open and receptive to change 
11. Being open and receptive to teachers (life is your curriculum) reading to learn, challenge

You balance inner practices and outer practices

A lot of “flourishing” lists tilt one way.

You’ve got:
Inner

• Knowing what you actually like (not algorithm-you)

• Slowing the brain

• Noticing

• Gratitude

• Receptivity to change

• Receptivity to teachers

Outer

• Adventure

• Skill building

• Making things with your hands

• Connection

• Caretaking

New ways of being myself

 "Growing Old: Or Older and Growing" by Carl Rogers; published in A Way of Being (1980)

Starts with "What is it like to be seventy-five years old?"  It's different than 55 or 35... but not as great as you imagine.

I have been so uniquely fortunate.

The physical side.  

"I still enjoy a four-mile walk on the beach. I can lift heavy objects, do all the shopping, cooking and dishwashing when my wife is ill, carry my own luggage without puffing.

"So, I am well aware that I am obviously old. Yet form the inside I'm still the same person in many. ways, neither old nor young. It is that person of whom I speak."

Activities... 

New enterprises... many involving psychological or even physical risk.

"... I have learned and put into practice new ways of being myself."  

(participants should experience their own power)

Risk Taking

"the experiences I value most in my recent life all entail considerable risk."

"I am bored by safety and sureness..... It is necessary to my life to try something new."

"But perhaps the major reason I am willing ot take chances is that I have found that in doing so, whether I succeed or fail, I learn. Learning, especially learning from experience, has been a prime element in making my life worthwhile. Such learning helps me to expand. So, I continue to risk.

Writings

4 books, forty shorter pieces, several films... since I was 65!  

Serenity

...events that touch me personally evoke a stronger reaction than before

Opening Up to New Ideas

here he talks about biofeedback, intuition... precognition, Kirlian photography

Intimacy

"I am more ready to touch and be touched, physically.  I do more hugging and kissing of both men and women. I am more aware of the sensuous side of my life. I also realize how much I desire close psychological contact with others. I recognize how much I need to care deeply for another and to receive that kind of caring in return..... I feel as though a whole new depth of capacity for intimacy has been discovered in me. This capacity has brought me much hurt, but an even greater share of joy."

"With these close friends, men and women, I can share any aspect of my self -- the painful, joyful, frightening, crazy, insecure, egotistical, self-deprecating feelings I have.  I can share fanatasies and dreams. Similary, my fiends share deeply with me. These experiences I find very enriching."

"It is so much easier to care for others for what I think they are, or wish they would be, or feel they should be. To care for this person for what he or she is, dropping my own expectations of what I want him or her to be for me, dropping my desire to change this person to suit my needs, is a most difficult but enriching way to a satisfying intimate relationship.

Personal Joys and difficulties

He separates from his wife.. "to live a life of my own"

Thoughts regarding death

"It may surprise you that at my age I think very little about death."

"I have been able to live my life -- not to the full, certainly, but with a satisfying degree of fullness -- and it seems natural that my life should come to an end."

Conclusion

"for me, these past ten years have been fascinating -- full of adventuresome undertakings. I have been able to open my self to new ideas, new feelings, new experiences, new risks.  Increasingly, I discover that being alive involves taking a chance, acting on less than certainty, engaging with life.

All of this brings change and for me the process of change is life.  I realize that if I were stable and steady and static, I would be living death.  So I accept confusion and uncertainty and fear and emotional highs and lows because they are the price I wilingly pay for a flowing, perplexing, exciting life."

*Flourishing: Book Outline: A Life that Keeps you Awake

 Here’s a 12-chapter arc that lets the reader grow into it rather than be instructed.

---

Working Title:

A Life That Keeps You Awake ?

Small practices for staying human in ordinary days

---

PART I — ORIENTATION: WHAT DOES FLOURISHING EVEN MEAN NOW?

Without this idea (peace is the way), the book could be read as:

“Here are good habits for a meaningful life.” 

With this idea, it becomes:

“Here is a way of moving through life that is not at war with the present moment.”

Chapter 1 — The Problem with Optimization

what you’re building isn’t a “how to live” book.

It’s closer to:

A book about how not to be at war with your own life while you’re living it.

Flourishing is not:

• pushing

• optimizing

• conquering habits

It is:

• arranging conditions

• showing up gently

• letting attention ripen

• acting without inner violence

Why “improving your life” often makes life thinner.
Algorithmic desire vs lived desire.
Flourishing as aliveness, not efficiency.

Core move: Shift from achievement to attention.

---

Chapter 2 — Learning What You Actually Like

Recovering taste from conditioning.
Appetite vs longing.
Why knowing what nourishes you is a moral and spiritual task now.

Flourishing quality: Agency of attention.

---

Chapter 3 — Slowing Down Enough to Be Here

What happens to perception when the nervous system isn’t rushed.
Stopping, meditation, pauses, silence — not as performance, but as capacity-building.

Flourishing quality: Inner spaciousness.

“I started noticing that certain kinds of input left me less able to feel my own life.”

Chapter 3 — Slowing Down Enough to Be Here

This chapter isn’t just about meditation or pausing.

It’s about:

Why we can’t slow down
Why we resist interiority
Why speed and stimulation feel safer than presence

That’s where:

• doomscrolling

• constant input

• “Amusing Ourselves to Death” (Postman)
  naturally enter.

Not as moral scolding. As cultural weather we’re all breathing.

You’re not saying:

“Phones are bad.”

You’re saying:

“Attention is now economically harvested, and slowness is an act of self-recovery.”

---

Chapter 4 — The Practice of Noticing

Noticing as the master skill beneath gratitude, wonder, love, art, and wisdom.
Why unnoticed life becomes un-lived life.

Flourishing quality: Aliveness to reality.

Chapter 4 — The Practice of Noticing

“What We Let In Shapes What We Can Feel”

You can’t notice if your attention is shredded.

So this chapter becomes:

Noticing requires subtraction, not just addition.

That’s where your idea of an attention diet is gold.

Not a detox. Not a purity thing.

More like:

What inputs make my mind more alive?
What inputs make my mind dull, agitated, or restless?

That’s perfectly aligned with your “learning what you actually like” theme earlier.

---

Chapter 5 — Enough: The Freedom of Letting This Be Sufficient

Pema Chödrön’s “it is enough.”
The nervous system of scarcity vs the nervous system of sufficiency.
Why striving can block flourishing.

Flourishing quality: Contentment without stagnation.

It belongs right after “Enough”

Because:

“Enough” softens striving.
“Peace is the way” softens how effort feels.

Together they say:

We are not trying to force flourishing.
We are practicing living in a way that does not violate the nervous system, the body, or other people.

---

It’s not mystical. It shows up in tiny shifts:

Activity	Striving Way	Peace-as-the-Way
Walking	Step count, pace, improvement	Feeling feet, weather, breath
Writing haiku	“I must produce something good”	Letting the day speak in small form
Connection ritual	“We should talk about important things”	Sitting together, unforced
Volunteering	“I should be useful”	Showing up with humility
Naikan	Self-analysis	Receiving reality

The outer action doesn’t change.
The inner tone does.

---

This also keeps the “Edge Practi

---

PART II — RHYTHMS: HOW A DAY QUIETLY SHAPES A LIFE

(Your second list — lived mechanisms)

Chapter 6 — Walk Your Way Into a Different Mind

Why walking changes perception, mood, thinking, and openness.
The body as a doorway to attention.

Rhythm: Daily movement as mental clearing.

---

Chapter 7 — The Bench After the Run

Effort → release → receptivity.
Using physiology to soften the mind.
Why stillness after exertion is different from forced stillness.

Rhythm: Somatic pathways to awareness.

---

Chapter 8 — Seeing Ordinary Life as Travel

Keeping a “travelogue” of daily life.
Wonder in the familiar.
Training perception to treat life as pilgrimage, not commute.

Rhythm: Writing to deepen seeing.

---

Chapter 9 — Make One Small Thing Every Day

Haiku, sketches, small acts of making.
Creation as participation, not performance.
Why small forms cultivate enoughness.

Rhythm: Daily making as soul maintenance.

---

Chapter 10 — The Cup of Coffee That Holds a Life

Daily rituals of connection.
Attention as love.
Relational flourishing over self-optimization.

Rhythm: Repeated moments of simple shared presence.

---

PART III — EDGES: HOW WE KEEP BECOMING

(The frontier list — growth, risk, expansion)

Chapter 11 — Practices That Decenter the Self

Naikan reflection, volunteering, caretaking beyond preference.
Seeing how we are supported.
Gratitude as realism, not positivity.

Edge: Moving from self-focus to interdependence.

---

Chapter 12 — Doing Something That Scares You (Gently)

Building the next life before the current one ends.
Risk as aliveness.
Trying identities before you “need” them.
Seasonal courage instead of constant reinvention.

Edge: Staying unfinished on purpose.

---

Closing Chapter — A Life Designed for Aliveness

Bringing it together:

• Compass (what matters)

• Rhythms (what stabilizes)

• Edges (what grows you)

Not a system.
A way of arranging days so a human being can remain awake, connected, and becoming.

---

Why this structure works

It mirrors how change actually happens:

1. See differently (orientation)

2. Live differently in small ways (rhythms)

3. Step into new identity slowly (edges)

It’s developmental, not prescriptive.

---

This also connects beautifully to “Enough”

Endless stimulation trains the nervous system in:
not-enoughness

Slowing, noticing, and attention limits train:
sufficiency

So your themes braid:

Problem	Practice
Endless input	Deliberate stopping
Algorithmic desire	Learning real preference
Constant amusement	Quiet noticing
Restless mind	Embodied rhythms

That’s a coherent argument.

---

Oh yes. That’s not an extra idea — that’s the underlying posture that keeps your whole project from turning into self-improvement culture.

You’ve been describing:

• things we do

• rhythms we keep

• edges we step toward

But Thich Nhat Hanh’s insight brings in the missing dimension:

How we do them matters as much as whether we do them.

Otherwise walking becomes fitness.
Haiku becomes productivity.
Volunteering becomes résumé.
Meditation becomes self-optimization.

“Peace is the way” protects the inner climate while the outer actions stay the same.

---

What that looks like by section

Part I (Orientation)

Practices here are perceptual:

• Notice what inputs leave you restless vs alive

• One minute of stopping before entering a room

• Write what you genuinely like (without justification)

These wake up awareness.

---

Part II (Rhythms)

Practices here are behavioral & embodied:

• Walk without audio

• Sit after exertion

• Keep a one-line daily travelogue

• Share a daily moment of attention with someone

These reshape daily life.

---

Part III (Edges)

Practices here are courage-based & relational:

• One Naikan-style reflection

• One small act of service

• One step toward a life you’re not yet sure you can live

These expand identity.

On Flourishing: Beyond Happiness

 Eudaimonia Definition (from: this source)

In its simplest (translated) form, eudaimonia is often taken to mean happiness (Deci & Ryan, 2006; Huta & Waterman, 2014; Heintzelman, 2018). Sometimes it is translated from the original ancient Greek as welfare, sometimes flourishing, and sometimes as wellbeing (Kraut, 2018). The concept of Eudaimonia comes from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, his philosophical work on the ‘science of happiness’ (Irwin, 2012).

“…wellbeing is not so much an outcome or end state as it is a process of fulfilling or realizing one’s daimon or true nature—that is, of fulfilling one’s virtuous potentials and living as one was inherently intended to live.”

As there are so many different ways to translate the term into English, it may even be helpful to look at the etymology. If it helps to provide more context, eudaimonia is a combination of the prefix eu (which means good, or well), and daimon (which means spirit) (Gåvertsson, n.d.).

Socrates, as discussed, saw eudaimonia as an ‘ultimate’ goal. Like Aristotle after him, Socrates emphasized the role and importance of arête very heavily—in fact, he believed it was both a means and an end to human happiness. In pursuit of what we now commonly refer to as ‘flourishing’, he encouraged people to ask themselves, and others, what was ‘good’ for our souls (Cooper, 1996).

He believed, it is argued, that eudaimonia was ‘justly living well’, and that in doing so, we seek not experiential pleasure or ‘honor’ in isolation, but a good and happy life, guided by our virtues (Cooper, 1997; Bobonich, 2010; Brown, 2012).

In their study, they give several examples of EWB (Norton, 1976; Waterman et al., 2010). Here are a few:

“Knowing who you really are” – Examples of this self-discovery might include the self-identity knowledge that comes from meditating on your core beliefs. Or, it could be a good understanding of your personal character strengths and qualities. It could even be the self-knowledge that comes from reflecting on your personal development or the values that you hold important.

“Developing these unique potentials” – Someone who scores high on EWB (according to the Questionnaire for Eudaimonic Wellbeing) makes a persistent, committed effort to building on this self-knowledge. A little more on the ‘how’ and the QEWB is covered very shortly.

“Using those potentials to fulfill your life goals” – Someone who is committed to this pursuit, over the long term, would be a prime example.

-

Questionnaire for Eudaimonic Wellbeing (QEWB) was developed by the same Waterman as above, and measures one’s (Waterman et al., 2010):

• A sense of meaning and purpose in life – which describes the personally meaningful objectives that we direct our talents and skills toward;
• Enjoyment derived from activities that are ‘personally expressive’ – a high score on this contributes to a higher Eudaimonic Wellbeing (EWB) score overall;
• Intense involvement in activities – not just any activities or hobbies, but those that are related to our life goals (see point 1 above);
• Perceived development of their own best potentials – this relates back to Aristotle’s idea of ‘fulfilling one’s virtuous potentials’; and
• Investment of significant effort – towards achieving excellence.

The specific eudaimonic activities they assessed were (Huta & Ryan, 2010):

• Seeking to pursue excellence or a personal ideal;
• Seeking to do what you believe in;
• Seeking to use the best in yourself; and
• Seeking to develop a skill, learn, or gain insight into something.

In another ‘daily diary’ study by Steger and colleagues (2008: 29), the following ‘eudaimonic behaviors’ were used to assess wellbeing:

• Volunteering one’s time;
• Giving money to someone in need;
• Writing out one’s future goals;
• Expressing gratitude for another’s actions, either written or verbal;
• Carefully listening to another’s point of view;
• Confiding in someone about something that is of personal importance; and
• Persevering at valued goals in spite of obstacles.

These eudaimonic activities were more strongly correlated than daily hedonic activities with wellbeing in terms of ‘daily meaning in life’ that the participants felt. The same went for daily positive affect and daily life satisfaction (Steger et al., 2008).

The distinction between eudaimonia and hedonia is examined in great depth by Huta and Waterman in their 2013 review of the happiness literature. For those after a quick, broad distinction between the two, here are the authors’ given examples of eudaimonia, based on literature review:

authenticity;

excellence;

meaning; and

growth.

Contrast and compare these with their examples of hedonia, and you’ll see that very, very roughly, the second is much less value-laden and somewhat more experiential:

an absence of distress;

comfort;

enjoyment; and

pleasure.

 according to Huta & Waterman (2013: 1448),

“…the most common elements in definitions of eudaimonia are growth, authenticity, meaning, and excellence. Together, these concepts provide a reasonable idea of what the majority of researchers mean by eudaimonia.”

With regard to hedonia, while ‘absence of distress’ wasn’t always an important element,

“…there is a clear consensus that pleasure/enjoyment/life satisfaction is core to the definition”

On Flourishing: Fighting Demons

                                            Sharaku (active 1794 - 1795) Japanese Woodblock

Samurai Fighting Demons

Keeping the Devil in his hole.  Nick Cave identifies one aspect of the danger of living in our world: cynicism.  It's one corrosive element in modern life.  One potential corrosive direction, activity, path.

He also identifies ways to keep the devil in his hole.   Playing onstage (link), making authentic connection.  

The metaphor suggests that a human needs to play an active role in resisting the devil.  (I don't think he means the literal devil here... not that the devil is tempting you to sin in specific 10 Commandment ways.)

It's active.  There are things you can do in life to keep him there.  

It's also not "slaying the demon"... instead, it's keeping the devil (for now) in the hole.  He is always there, ready to emerge.

(One good way to maintain a weed-free lawn is to have healthy grass.  The healthy grass doesn't leave room for weeds... or at least makes it harder for weeds to get started.  So, the best way to get rid of weeds to maintain a thriving, flourishing lawn -- fertilize, water, aerate annually.) (I don't love this metaphor bc it's about suburan lawns, and brings to mind lawn care, chemical fertiziler, 

First Thoughs on Flourishing

A plant with deep roots can withstand a drought, a windstorm.  It can continue "planting" even when conditions are stressful or traumatic.

In D&D, character's health is defined by hit points.  As you become more experienced, you earn hit points which allow you to continue your journey, even if you come across Asmodian the devil.

I imagine that, even in good times, the plant is able to take in more water, nutrients, able to be more open to the sun to photosynthesize.  (Does a plant JUST photosynthesize? No.  It matures, reproduces, provides food for insects, etc.... it lives in a matrix of beings and being and doing.)

People who are flourishing experience grief and stress and struggle; they experience sadness and withdraw from social relations for a time.  (grief hits, or illness, or failure, or betrays... they take real damage, they're wounded, maybe badly. But they don't go to zero. they absorb damage without total collapse.) But they continue their essential tasks.  

In non-flourishing person.... the grief/wound eclipses everything else: relationships, purpose, bodily care, connection to beauty.  They become isolated, bitter, poisonous to others.  Or, they might refuse the grief, numbing it with work or substances or frantic activity, performing 'I'm fine' while something essential dies inside them.

Plants (in my house at least) can exist for a long time in some middle state between flourishing and collapse.  Rootbound.  Over or under watered (soggy or parched) leaves with a strange cast of yellow, dropping leaves, but continuing, trying to make it through until they get repotted or get their leaves dusted or put in a more light-filled room.  

In my experience, (though I don't live in anyone else's body or brain) that's where most people live -- frantic, or frozen with anxiety, or sunk in sadness, or bored and searching diversion (look at this silly meme!) depression, loneliness, without connection, untethered, without meaning.  Rootbound, unthriving, unflourishing.

Approaching Sundown by Jorie Graham

 there is suddenness

to all surfaces—
in the fields
forwardness is

ensnared, & all
stops. The lawn
is a god. A door in the trees
opens. Corridors appear everywhere

as light & the light says
you want to live &
nothing
happens. The lowering light

gathers in the waist of
the day, it glows
on bark on chips of
rock & right there in the upcurl

of the dried leaf on that blue
chair & also there
on the live leaf at the branch-tip of
that young oak

which had just moments ago
sashayed in bits of wind & is now
brutal in its
stillness.

A towhee flies off & leaves behind

this.

We do not exhale.

It is possible consciousness dis-

appears from the atmosphere
taking with it the crazed
minutes
running towards the end

only because they were
let loose
once—& you cannot strip away
this skin which holds u

in, you cannot hide
from the rush
which will start up again
as soon as u ex-

hale, but for now
pain awakens to find itself
not pain, whatever is
hatching us is

done & falls
away & we are
dropped
down. The incubation is

suddenly over.
That anything occurred before is
erased. Do not
forget this

when u return

to that world

where the casting about of the soul
which lives in the shadows
begins again,
where the leaves swirl up

into the twisting torso
of the wind
which wants once again to peer
in all the other

Report on 3x10 #2 2026

 Here's a report on 3x10 #2 of 2026. (#1 means it's aligned to Middle Season #2)

Just the numbers: I  get into the basement 5x.  I write 10 haiku; I do guitar 8x; I do foot or weightlifting 0x

Basement

Guitar

Exercise

Iris Murdoch's "Inhabited Philosophy"

 

From Sarah Bakewell

 Montaigne was as concrete as they come. His philosophy was his life. Where he touched on moral or metaphysical questions in his great compendium the Essais, it was to explore how they arose in his everyday routine or his private reading. If he was a philosopher at all, he said, he was only an “unpremeditated and accidental philosopher”, one who wrote whatever passed through his mind at each moment and occasionally happened to cross paths with the great thinkers of the past. His interest was in the existence of one man: himself. Yet this opened up a perspective on human existence in general, for “each man bears the entire form of the human condition”. Even if human beings varied in character – as they did, enormously – they remained united precisely by this shared fact of variability. To study one soul in its oddity was to study everyone in their normality.

Thus, Montaigne ranged through the wildest shores of human experience while staying firmly at home: he wrote about his readings of classical Sceptics and Epicureans, about ethics and theology and politics, but also about his neighbours, his cat and dog, his sexual adventures, his meetings with kings and politicians, his near brushes with death, his painful kidney-stones, his periods of contentment or grief or fear or exhilaration, his mistakes and his moments of vanity or stupidity. “I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter,” he said. “You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff.”

Montaigne’s mixture of the personal and the universal was utterly original, but the idea that moral philosophy should be tied up with any individual life at all came from classical tradition. Many Greek and Roman philosophers made it their business to create techniques for good living – a wisdom so practical that we could almost compare it to modern “self-help”. Only later did the majority of philosophers come to see their job as cultivating professional expertise, formulating universally valid laws, and building a self-consistent edifice of thought. Montaigne made no such claims, especially not to consistency. It was, after all, himself he was writing about, and he was always changing, so why try to force his ideas into an artificially rigid form?

A few later philosophers kept the “techniques for living well” tradition going. In the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that the only true test of a moral philosophy was whether you could live by it. Alas, he provides a rather poor example of this himself. Suffering from serious mental and physical illnesses, Nietzsche found no comfortable position in the world, and could not even take a train journey without succumbing to overwhelming anxieties and failings of nerve. Does this mean his philosophy was no good for life, and that it failed his own test? I believe not, for I don’t think Nietzsche’s “test” is the sort you simply pass or fail. I prefer to think of it as a variant on Montaigne’s term “essay”, a word he coined from the French essayer, “to try”. This is a kind of testing too, but of the kind that is more like a sample, a taste, or a dipping of the toe into strange waters. Nietzsche’s test is a way of living by philosophy, in such a way that you push it, squeeze it into different shapes, and see what comes out of it.

An even better definition of the philosophical life-test comes from Iris Murdoch. In her Sovereignty of Good, she wrote that any moral philosophy must be inhabited. What counts is not so much whether it passes an exam, as what kinds of occupancy it can support. Is anyone at home in this philosophy? Does it have flesh and bones, or rather joints and floorboards? If you knock, does anyone come to the door?

Both Montaigne and Murdoch were speaking of moral philosophy, but I think this idea of inhabitability can be applied to philosophical disciplines of all kinds. In the early twentieth century, continental phenomenologists picked up on the Montaignesque notion that you can learn something important by closely studying one’s everyday experience of life – “practical objects of every sort: streets with street lights, dwellings, furniture, works of art, books, tools, and so forth”, as the technique’s creator Edmund Husserl put it. His disciple Martin Heidegger based a significant part of his philosophy on the experience of using a hammer, while Jean-Paul Sartre would write at length about watching a waiter in a Parisian cafe.