What is a Good Life? #123
Philosophy as a Daily Practice with Jessica Böhme
📣 Announcement 📣
Over the past four years, I’ve asked nearly 300 people this question—one-on-one. I’m now offering a 5-week online course for a small group of 8 people to explore this same question together. Click here to find out more.
This Week’s Podcast
On the 123rd episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I’m delighted to welcome our guest, Jessica Böhme. Jessica is a professor and academic director of technology management at FHM Berlin, and she is the founder of the Institute for Practical ekoPhilosophy (IPeP). She writes a weekly newsletter "wild:philosophy," where she explores how to live life in a collapsing world. Her expertise lies in utilising philosophy as a meta-technology for individual, social, and ecological transformations.
In this episode, we delve into the profound question of how to live this life—particularly in the context of sustainability and personal responsibility. We discuss the concept of 'messy disturbance' in navigating life's complexities, the paralysis that can come from heightened awareness, and reflect on the experiments Jessica undertook to align her actions with her values—including her remarkable "one dress" experiment, in which she wore the same dress every day for over a year.
This conversation celebrates curiosity, the wisdom gained through lived experience, paying attention to life’s feedback and how philosophy can be practiced in everyday life, offering a grounding force amidst uncertainty.
The weekly clip from the podcast (2.5 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (57 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
There is something beautiful that Jessica touches on in this interview that she calls messy disturbance. This feeling or state of almost paralysis we can experience when we really broaden our attention and awareness.
When we become aware of so much more information or experience—when we go beyond looking at everything in isolation and start seeing it as an overall connected field—everything becomes related.
It is a state where it can be hard to make choices when you consider every choice’s broader implications.
…Which can lead to overwhelm…
Until there is an acceptance that it is impossible to come up with a perfect answer in life.
(Unless you’ve already realised it is 42! Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference.)
And while this acceptance does not extricate you from the swings and roundabouts of human life, it does seem to take some of the heightened edge off it.
It feels like some sort of reward for at least attempting to understand it a little better, and for accepting that perhaps there is no solution to this life.
It is more a series of experiences and experiments that play out every day.
Some days, weeks, or months even, we’ll feel like it is steady—possibly even predictable.
Other seconds, minutes, or hours, we’ll feel like it is changing in ways that we simply cannot compute or imagine.
I am often struck by my little daughter’s capacity, who is not yet two, to scratch my face and then, within a few seconds, lean in again to give me a gentle kiss on the cheek.
I am also often struck by the range of my own behaviour—to be incredibly loving and, in other moments, to feel such anger.
When I look at the world around me, I see it is filled with what may seem like the same dichotomy: so many acts of heroism, creativity, and kindness… and so many acts of cowardice, treachery, and destruction.
Whether it is trying to fully understand the world, its troubles, those around us, or ourselves—it is really hard to rest on a fixed answer or description.
As Jessica points out in the interview, her philosophy for life is not a fixed or final answer, but one that responds to life. One that pays attention to its feedback, that takes into account her own present circumstances. And that realisation—that it will always be moving.
When I initially privately interviewed 120 people around this question for the first iteration of this newsletter, recalibration was a sentiment or word that came up so often.
I sense the more sensitive we become to what this life is suggesting to us—or the more we acknowledge that our own needs are changing—the more we can let go of our fixed answers or even our ideas and notions of ourselves.
The more we can simply move with this life.
This crazy, wonderful, confusing, painful, joyful, and miraculous life.
The more we pay attention to it and respond in this way, the more we shift from trying to figure it out to simply being with it.
It will still bring us to our knees, break our hearts, make us weep… yet we remain aware that it can also fill our hearts to the brim, make us sing, dance, love, and create.
And for me, I don’t think I can ask much more from it than that.
To sign up to the What is a Good Life? Course
3. Full Episode - Philosophy as a Daily Practice with Jessica Böhme - What is a Good Life? #123
4. This week’s Questions
Where in your life do you see the greatest opportunity to better align your actions with your values or philosophy?
What part of your life might benefit from less analysis and more acceptance?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 250 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own self-inquiry through one-on-one coaching, joining my 5-week What is a Good Life? group courses, or fostering greater trust, communication, and connection within your leadership teams, or simply reaching out, feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn.