An Approach to Life

This text was mostly written on the third of March 2025. I changed certain phrases and updated or deleted paragraphs, so this is the more coherent and better formulated version of the original. To me it feels very raw and personal, which makes this text charming yet imperfect. Thanks for reading!

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Life is approached with a certain attitude. Everyone has a certain attitude towards life, a certain innate view about the world. It is set in stone for some, and rather changing in others. You could see the world, and life as a whole, as a scary place where competition and dominance rules - you could also see it as a cooperative place, in which people love each other, try to help and better the world. You could see people as loving, you could see people as hating. You may feel like everything is moving fast and everything is changing all the time - you might feel like everything stays the same, and there is so much order around you that it is suffocating.

There are different components to “attitude”. The “abc” conceptualisation as we have learned it in social psychology class is the following: a for affective, b for behavioural and c for cognitive.

I understand affective as the emotional, sensational part of attitudes. How do you actually feel when walking around in the city, full of people. Do you see others as potential dangers? Do you see opportunities to discover new things or do you cling on what you know?

Behavioural means what we actually do, how we act, how we re-act towards our environment.

Lastly, in my understanding, cognitive is rather deliberate thoughts. So actual language I would assign to something for example. If someone asks me how I think about Trump’s politics, then whatever I would respond represents the cognitive aspect of my attitude towards him and his (wrong)doings.

Taking it all together, our attitudes explain our (a) emotions, our (b) actions and (c) thoughts we have towards “the world” whatever that is - objects, people, cats or an approach to life on a more deep intrinsic level! Life can be seen as mere obligations and tasks which are to be completed. Life can be seen as a playground, a place where experimentation and creativity should thrive. For many people their attitude towards life originates from a religious faith - life is supposed to be lived according to certain rules, loving God, respecting your parents, fasting at a certain time of the year, devoting your life to a higher power. What I am describing is the feeling that we all have towards our existence, even if we never deliberately thought about it. Is it merely physical or is there more behind the curtain? Is there even a curtain? I truly believe there are people out there who don’t care to think about life more deeply, even though I think they are in the minority - but honestly I don’t know.

For me, life is profoundly magical. Existence itself is wondrous. Doing nothing but thinking for some time leads me to that understanding. That I am conscious of my sensations, conscious about existence itself, and that I, we as humans, can express our detailed thoughts about that is crazy to me. I know that I am not the only one thinking about life that way. There is plenty of philosophy, literature, art out there dedicated to this (note to myself: might be worth a search for books and art that concern this topic).

From that point of view I want to approach life. I want to approach life with the feeling, that existence is magical, that really everything, at least for me, is located in my consciousness. Literally everything is a product of my brain computing stimuli into coherent products, illusions one might say, which I am aware of ”with or within my consciousness”. How human consciousness arises out of matter is astonishing and still far from answered scientifically.

To that feeling of amazement, I want to add the mental pillars of evanescence, gratitude, personal growth and the ultimate success mantra as fundamental axioms, which should guide my thinking and behaviour all the time.

Everything I say, everything I do, everything I eat, every time I breathe and work should be accompanied by those forces. I don’t want to walk around, wondering nervously about what strangers might think of me (even though that is perfectly human). I don’t want to feel inferior next to people I feel like are cool - I want to be deeply connected to the true fabric of reality. This consciousness I going to end. As I have been born out of small cells, I will go back to be dirt, maybe I will serve as minerals for tupils or roses, or a beautiful cherry tree. Whatever it is, I will surely die. And that is deeply moving. That makes me very sad. But it also reliefs me in a way. Most importantly it is simply true! It is never good to not face truth. Facing truth is scary oftentimes, but it is surely deliberating and in the long run better than lying and deceiving - running away from truth, and that includes death, is impossible.

How do I get to that point? How do I become more connected to reality? How do I integrate these axioms - amazement, evanescence, gratitude, growth and ongoing positivity - into my everyday being?

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Feel free to comment what reading this text made you think about :).