Alyssa Luboff, PhD

People often reach out to me and say, “Alyssa, my life is insane. You just can’t imagine.” And I get it. I actually can imagine. I’ve been there. My life has been – and still is, because we’re always learning and growing – everything but simple or easy. And then there are the people I don’t hear from at all. Sometimes they feel like tearing everything apart and giving up instead of reaching out. Sometimes they feel too confused to know where to start to explain.

Here’s a variation on a familiar saying: Life is what happens while you’re trying to get your work done. For many of us, balancing the demands of work and relationships feels impossible. These can be relationships with parents, partners, children, friends, and also ourselves. What we need to do to make a living feels at odds with the art of living itself—that is, the art of cultivating healthy connection with ourselves and others.

One day in Tai Chi class, my instructor said something that surprised me. When you’re experiencing a lot of Yang energy and everything is going strong, he said, expect Yin to come along. In other words, when you’ve been flying high for some time, expect to come down. When life is easy, expect it to grow hard. Now, if you’ve ever heard of Yin and Yang, you’re probably wondering why this surprised me. I’m a healer and philosopher; don’t I know this? Life goes up and down. The p

The other day a reader on Facebook contacted me. He wanted to get a professional philosopher’s take on a question. “What do you think…,” he asked, “of the meaning of existence?” “Well, that’s a big question,” I could hear my own advisor answering in my head. In academic philosophy, we are trained to be very careful and precise in our thinking. It’s a great skill, but sometimes it gets in the way of really engaging with life.