Love for Life
When I was nine, my parents sat my sister and me down at the kitchen table to announce they were getting divorced. Those years hardened me. I did not know how to feel, so instead of feeling anything, I chose to detach. When I detached, I did not have to deal with the hurt, loss, or fear. But detachment comes at a high price. When you detach, you look down, you avoid, and you stop noticing the everyday beauty around you. Instead of going outside, I filled my life with computers, video games, and TV shows. If you had asked me, I would have told you there was nothing worth seeing where I lived, so I stayed in.
People hear the word nature and think of wilderness, but for me it can also be the afternoon light on the brick buildings on my way to work, the rain on my face, the taste of dinner when I eat slowly and with mindfulness, or walking down a street in my own neighborhood I have never walked before, carefully studying the windows and decoration.
Erik Thor, Why I Love
Looking Up and Stepping Outside
Looking up at fifteen
One afternoon when I was fifteen, I was alone at home, deep in the middle of an online game, when two Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on my front door. Before I could politely close the door, the woman pointed up past our roof. “Don’t you think this world is too beautiful to have been created by pure chance?” she asked. I followed her finger and looked up at the sky. The white clouds, the summer sun, the trees. “I think it’s beautiful precisely because it happened by chance,” I replied. As I closed the door and walked back toward my glowing monitor, I stopped and asked myself: what am I doing in here?
Stepping out into the weather
In my twenties, I often told myself I was simply too sensitive for the world. Crowds and noise felt overwhelming, and I used that excuse to justify staying home. But the more you avoid discomfort, the smaller your world becomes. When you cut out all stimulation, even minor inconveniences start to feel intolerable. You do not grow stronger by sealing yourself indoors; you grow stronger by stepping out into the weather.
Venice Alleys and Prompting in the Summer Sun
In my early twenties, a friend called me out at a party: “You always leave early. You don’t know how to have fun anymore.”
Just to win a five-minute argument at a party, I blurted out: “I do have fun! In fact, I’m planning an Interrail train trip across Europe this summer.” She asked if she could come with me, and it turned out she didn’t believe in itineraries or hotels. She wanted us to couchsurf with strangers and decide which country to visit each morning after we woke up.
In Venice, we arrived after a hot, exhausting train ride over the Alps with no hotel booked. We wandered the narrow alleys for hours in the dark with a confusing paper map, nervous about getting lost. But we found a small room, crashed at two in the morning, and woke up to sunlight over the canals. Those moments were physically uncomfortable, but they taught me something lasting: I did not need to control every outcome. I could handle being lost, tired, or confused, and still find my way through.
Even after you learn to step outside, the screen always finds a new way to call you back inside. When I gained access to advanced AI coding tools this summer, I downloaded the AI apps onto my phone so I could keep prompting while walking outside, my eyes glued to the glass under a bright July sky. I had spent my whole life feeling as though I was running behind, and I convinced myself that these machines were my chance to catch up. Catching myself staring at my phone under a bright July sky reminded me of something no machine can ever understand: there is no such thing as being behind in life. Nobody was keeping score. I slipped the phone into my pocket and walked out into the sun.
“When I made safe comfort my highest goal, my world shrunk. Stepping outside my room proved that the world wasn’t nearly as dangerous as my imagination claimed.”
Micro-test quiz with 10 questions
Love For Life Match
Check off statements above to calculate your match score.
Reflection & Practice
Reclaiming Wonder
What comfortable routines are you using to protect yourself from discomfort? What is an experience you have been avoiding because you cannot predict or control how it will go, and what is the smallest unscripted step you could take toward it today?
Continue Your Journey
Take the Eight Practices of Love Test
See how your love for life compares with your care for yourself, the truth, and other people across 48 reflective questions.
Explore the Book Why I Love
Read Chapter 4 of Why I Love on growing up in northern Sweden, prompting in the summer sun, and stepping outside.
Loading discussion…