Relational Ground (Chapter Four)

I’m currently writing The Practice of Being Alive: Modern Humans in Search of Ground in a Nihilistic Age. It’s a book about what it means to remain psychologically grounded and fully alive in a world where inherited systems of meaning are collapsing, institutional trust is eroding, and millions of people are being left to navigate identity, purpose, freedom, and reality without any coherent framework for how to live.

Rather than disappearing for years and emerging later with a finished manuscript, I’ve decided to share the process as it unfolds. I’ll be publishing chapters here as working drafts and inviting readers into the development of the book itself.

This isn’t meant to be passive early access. Your reflections, questions, disagreements, and friction points genuinely help sharpen the work. Some of the most important insights emerge through conversation, resonance, and challenge.

If you’ve been following my broader work around existential health, non-religious spirituality, meaning, identity, and life after inherited certainties, thank you. Your support and engagement are part of what makes projects like this possible.

And if you’re interested in existential health not simply as an abstract idea, but as an ongoing lived practice under modern conditions, this is where the book begins taking form.

Relational Ground (Chapter Four)

By the end of the week, many people are tired of other people.

This is rarely resentment or a desire to withdraw from everyone entirely. Often the relationships themselves are fine. The dinner went well. The meeting was ordinary. The phone call was pleasant enough. No one said anything cruel. Nothing had to be repaired afterward.

Still, when it is over, there is relief.

The door closes. The car starts. The phone goes quiet. For a few minutes, there is no one to answer, no face to read, no tone to manage. Something in the body loosens before the mind has explained why it was tight.

Most people interpret this quickly. They say they are introverted, socially tired, overstimulated, burned out. Sometimes that is true. There are limits to how much interaction a person can absorb, especially inside lives already crowded with obligation. But there is another kind of exhaustion that does not come from being with people exactly. It comes from the work of remaining acceptable while being with them.