Living Is Our Engagement With What Is Present

Life and living are easy to collapse. One way to separate them is to call life what is present and living our interaction with it.

A circumstance belongs to the life we encounter. Speaking, choosing, relating, resisting, accepting, and responding belong to living. This does not make us sovereign over circumstances. It helps us see where participation enters.

Without that separation, difficulty in how we are living can feel like a verdict on life itself. With it, another question becomes available: This is what is here. How am I living with it?

Sometimes what we do changes a circumstance. Sometimes it does not. Living is still the domain in which our engagement occurs.