Blog - Life-Savor.com

A Mortality Awareness Triad

It’s a paradox that takes a moment to sink in. The very fact of our mortality is what makes us blessed. Out of all the trillions of combinations of atoms that never existed in human form—you exist. You not only exist, but you exist with awareness, memory, imagination, and the ability to savor.

Life Is a Once-in-Eternity Gift

Every human life is a once-in-eternity chance. The atoms that make you will never again assemble in quite this way. This moment, this breath, this chance to savor existence — it is yours alone. Never to be duplicated. It’s easy to forget. Life’s ordinariness dulls us, its hardships weary us, its routines put us to sleep. But beneath the blur of familiarity lies something astonishing: we exist at all.

The Mirage of Numbing

When life grows heavy, numbing calls to us like a mirage. A drink to quiet the nerves. A screen to scroll the hours away. A purchase to fill the hollow. A burst of workaholism to silence the questions. For a moment, numbing seems to help. The ache dulls. The noise fades. But then the mirage evaporates, and we find ourselves not refreshed but emptier, further from the wellspring of life.

How Do We Stay Sane Enough to Love Life?

Okay, Mr. Life Savor: yes, life is a gift. But it’s also a trial. Bills come due, bodies ache, relationships fray, accidents strike, and headlines darken our minds. Even when fortune smiles, stress and worry find their way in. So the question arises: how do we stay sane enough to keep loving life?

The Human Gift of Appreciation

As human beings, we carry a peculiar burden and a singular gift. The burden is volition: we must choose to live. We can drift, we can despair, we can even decide not to carry on. But the gift is appreciation: we can pause, look around, and see that life itself is worth choosing.

The Meaning of Independence

When people hear the word independence, they often picture rebellion. A teenager slamming the bedroom door. A lone wolf snarling at the pack. A hermit cut off from the world. But that’s not the independence I mean. Independence is not defiance for its own sake, nor is it isolation from others. True independence is subtler and more profound: it is the dignity of authorship over your one and only life.

The Long Road to Selfhood

We live in a culture addicted to quick answers. “Find your true self.” “Unlock your destiny.” “Discover who you are.” As if identity were a hidden treasure chest waiting to be unearthed in one glorious moment of revelation. But selfhood doesn’t arrive like lightning. It unfolds like a long, winding road. There are detours, false starts, switchbacks, and stretches where the scenery seems to repeat itself. Becoming ourselves is not about one defining moment but a lifetime of becoming.

Why We Try

Why do we try? Why do we get up each morning, set goals, chase dreams, fight through setbacks, and reach again for more? The cynical answer is survival. We try because we must: food to eat, bills to pay, routines to maintain. But survival is only the foundation. Beyond necessity lies something deeper: a hunger for meaning, a desire to expand, a refusal to let existence slip by unnoticed. Trying is more than survival. It is gratitude in motion.

Carpe Diem: Seizing Our Time Alive

“Carpe diem” — seize the day. Two words from the Roman poet Horace that echo across centuries. They’ve been carved into marble, printed on posters, whispered in commencement speeches, and shouted from movie screens. It’s easy to dismiss them as cliché. But clichés often become clichés because they carry truth. And in this case, the truth is sharp: our time is short, and the day before us is all we can actually grasp.

Setting the Compass

Without orientation, the adventure dissolves into wandering. You may stumble on some wonders, but you may also waste your days, circle endlessly, or end up somewhere you never wanted to be. Life is like that. Deciding that life is precious — that it’s worth living and savoring — is the first and most important step. But once you’ve made that choice, the next question is: where are you heading?

Friendship, Creation and Purpose

Instead of one long essay, today I’m sharing three short reflections tied together by a common thread. Think of it as a triad—three perspectives that complement each other. Today, let's listen to Aristotle, Nietzsche and Rilke on friendship, creation and purpose.

The Preciousness of Being Human

Humans live with a peculiar gift: awareness of our own awareness. We don’t just sense—we notice that we are sensing. We don’t just value—we value the fact that we can value. This self-reflexive loop, unique in the animal kingdom as far as we know, changes everything.

Why Live? A Realistic Source of Meaning

Albert Camus once said the most important philosophical question is whether life is worth living. Before ethics, politics, or metaphysics, we must decide: why bother at all?It’s not a hypothetical question. Suicide reminds us that the choice to live is not automatic. As self-aware beings, we need a reason to keep going. A reason that makes sense of the struggle and validates the effort.

The Luck of Being Alive

Every blade of grass, every rock, every storm cloud exists—but without awareness. You, on the other hand, get to register the miracle. You can taste a strawberry, hear a symphony, laugh until your ribs ache. You are one of the very few arrangements of matter in the cosmos that gets to know it’s here. That alone is astonishing.

The Weight of Expectations

We all know the feeling. Expectations press in like a fog, filling our head with shoulds and musts. A grade, a job title, a social standing. One misstep feels catastrophic, as if the whole life we’ve imagined will implode. Sometimes the cost of those expectations is devastating.

Life’s Gift

A hymn. A moment. A win. None of these require life to be perfect. They only require that you have life, and that you be conscious of it. The great secret is that you don’t have to add anything to life for it to be worthy of your attention and appreciation. The fact that you exist at all is always present as a source of reverence and awe.

A Triad on Mortality Awareness

Mortality awareness isn’t about dwelling on death. It’s about waking up to life. Remembering death helps us see through the fog of expectations and disappointments to the miracle of simply being alive.

“Preparing for Takeoff”

A short story about one who seizes life and one who fears it--one who lives without thinking and one who thinks without living. A chance encounter upends both.

The Aesthetic Experience of Life

Why bother living? It’s a heavy question—but an honest one. We all ask it, whether in quiet moments or darker ones. What makes this life worth all the effort, the heartbreak, the slog? What’s the payoff that justifies the pain? Because let’s face it: life isn’t Disneyland. It’s messy. It’s hard. It’s work. So why do we stay?

Follow Your Fascination

There are a million ideas out there about what to do with your life. Your parents have one. So do your friends, your boss, your culture. They’ll tell you what’s smart. What’s responsible. What’s impressive. But if you want a compass that points to something truly yours, try this one: follow your fascination.

Depressed? Maybe That’s Okay For A While

Is depression all bad? Well, yes, in a sense it is. Because when you’re depressed, nothing feels good. But in the background, there are some things going on that can actually be helpful to you. Especially if you fully and honestly let yourself be depressed.

Glorious Life Experiences

These are moments that pierce the ordinary. They remind us of what’s possible in life—not someday, but right here and now. They’re not about material achievement, nor about numbing pleasure. They’re about something more primal and profound: the sheer aesthetic experience of being alive.

“After Life” Made Me Cry. Repeatedly.

In a world full of prestige TV, one small, tender series broke my film-geek defenses—and made me cry every single time. After Life (currently on Netflix) is the most personally moving TV series I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something....

Living for the Aesthetic Experience of Life

Life is hard. The grind of obligations. The stresses. The frustrations. Sometimes it feels like we’re barely keeping our heads above water. So we ask ourselves: Why do we live? What's it all for? Why do we even bother? I believe we live for something so uniquely human that we often overlook it. I believe we live for the aesthetic experience of life.

silhouette of man running on beach during sunset

3 Reasons to Love Life

I want to talk to you about a few reasons to live, and to love being alive. But first I want to talk about death, because death helps us appreciate life. It puts things in perspective. The first time this was really clear to me was when I was 17 years old and almost died.

What Is Life Savor?

Life is precious, but we often don’t think of it that way.We take life for granted because it has always been with us and we have never known a time without it.In reality, life—especially human life—is the most rare and precious of privileges.

The Preciousness of Life

I stand outside on one of those perfectly beautiful days, feeling the breeze on my face and on my arms. I look at the swaying trees and grasses around me, and at the sun and clouds in the sky above. I am filled with a sense of perfection and awe. What’s amazing to me is that the wonder-filled beauty of the world is not a dream.

Awaken To Your Win

For me, when choking from stress in life, it’s helpful if I can find a time and place away from everything where I can be alone with my thoughts and surround myself with nothing but reminders of the giftness of life. During such times, I can remember and appreciate again what is really important in life. The fact that I get to breathe air into my lungs. The fact that I get to....

The Progress Trap

I love making progress, but sometimes I get too caught up in it.Progress helps me achieve a sense of traction in life, giving me a daily trickle of both saline and champagne. When I make progress, I feel empowered, fulfilled and secure because I feel like I’m perpetually ratcheting up.Sometimes, though, my fixation on progress becomes unhealthy, almost like a drug addiction.

woman looking at sea while sitting on beach

Managing Expectations

Expectation primes us to be disappointed if things don’t work out exactly as planned. In reality, life rarely goes exactly as planned (especially when others are involved), and progress is often necessarily slow and uncertain.Furthermore, expectations make us pre-live what we think our experiences should be to the point of leaving us emotionally fatigued, bored and disappointed by the time the results of our goals become real.