we are all aware of mysterious forces at play that we have no control over
APR 24, 2026
there are some parts of the human experience. unnamable supernatural things. that can only be experienced and felt. they can not be explained. we’ve all had them.
they’re so subtle and piercing and whole-making and inconceivable that we don’t speak of them. spiritual in nature but not fitting into the spiritual paradigms that we have created to make sense of them. they happen in slow ordinary moments. they happen in nature. they happen when we are still enough to experience what is. they exist only as an inward expansion.
in a sense these are moments of ecstasy. moments we yield to and yearn for even though we cannot make sense of them or explain them to ourselves or others. they exist as a secret, a mystery, a private encounter with the trifecta of living, life and the cosmic cosmos.
we are all aware of mysterious forces at play that we have no control over. in fact, the incessant clamouring for control is probably the major thing that stands in the way of our lives naturally unfolding
there is a part of us that wants this experience all the time. but we cannot exist in this heightened presence all the time. life pulls and tugs at us, and we sweep in and out.
there are ways to prolong it. movement, meditation, and music are some of them.
A final reminder: Applications for COWORK starting in May close this weekend. you don’t need more strategy, advice or ideas. you need support to do what you need to do and space to do it in. More here.
I’m sitting on an airport floor next to a charging point, simultaneously charging my laptop, phone and writing these words to you. it smells bad here. there is nowhere else to sit and I wish I didn’t have to sit here but the need for electricity coursing through my gadgets is higher than olfactory pleasantry.
I didn’t bring my adaptor, not realising the plugs would be different and stubbornly resisted buying yet another technical item I would eventually have to carry around, so I made the power in my laptop and phone stretch across two days of work and life until I made it here.
there are stains on the blue and green 80s-zigzag-patterned carpet that has been stretched hastily, leaving bumps along it. and people’s hair and bits of, idk, food, and threads falling loose from clothing. I’m grateful my clothes exist between me and it. I’m on my way home. I can’t wait to return to my little green villa and tiny puppies and daily rituals.
I think a lot about how any decision you make at any time can change your life. it’s a game of roulette. you make hundreds of thousands of decisions every day, and every now and then, you make one very similar or even the same decision you’ve made before and everything changes.
you talk to a stranger. maybe you’ve spoken to dozens of strangers over the past week but this one stranger changes everything. you get on a bus. in a plane. you eat at a specific restaurant. you stop and linger someplace just a little bit longer. decision roulette.
what makes one decision different from another? not much, really. we can’t control these things. it’s another one of those unnamable supernatural things. but I do think that you can increase your surface area of luck through the quality of your decisions.
a decision made in a moment of total presence takes on an entirely different life and quality than a decision made in autopilot. it becomes a living entity that has a will of its own.
this form of devotional presence, where half my attention is inside my soul looking out at the world observing the lived experience, and half of it outside my body responding to my current moment-to-moment environment, is the closest I can get to living in the mystery of the human experience.
and when I make decisions from that place: intuitive, illogical, kismet, they lead me to moments that can only be explained by there being some kind of unknown mysterious forces at play.
that’s the high I keep chasing. the human experience as half mystical, half physical.