For Everyone Whose Mind Can’t Settle
A Spiritual Practice
Hello and welcome to rewilding philosophy.
The past two weeks, I’ve been writing essays about why neither solutions nor tools are as helpful as we often make them out to be. This week, I want to explore a possible way forward - a “solution,” if you will - to that very problem. The irony is not lost on me.
As you read, I invite you to notice how this lands with you. How does it feel in your body? Do you experience something like an anti-climax? Does it seem too simplified? Are you disappointed? How is it different from reading about a problem or challenge compared to reading about a way forward? If you’re anything like me, once you’re offered something that answers, you might find yourself less interested. There’s something about the unresolved, the open-ended, that keeps us engaged, curious, and alive.
The way it plays out for me, for example, is that there’s a thrill in the complexity, the messiness, the not-knowing. It’s in this space of uncertainty that I feel most creative, most alive. But the moment someone offers a solution, something in me recoils. The magic evaporates, the mystery dissolves, and I’m left with something that feels flat, lifeless, and oddly dissatisfying. It’s not that the solution is wrong or unhelpful; it’s that it closes the door on exploration. It replaces the fertile ground of inquiry with the sterile certainty of an answer.
Solutions and tools promise clarity and resolution, but they often come at the cost of curiosity and depth. They give us something to hold onto, but they also limit what we’re willing to see. And yet, here I am, about to propose a way forward. Yet, perhaps there’s a way to offer a “solution” that doesn’t close the door - a way to point toward something without claiming to have the final answer. Perhaps the way forward isn’t a solution at all, but a practice, a mindset, a way of being that keeps us open to the messiness of life.
Open-Endings
What I have been searching for, for a great part of my life, is to stay in the open-endedness - to dwell in the space of questions. This is what stills my hunger for exploration and keeps me alive to the possibilities of life. There’s something profoundly nourishing about not having everything figured out, about allowing the unknown to remain unknown. The way I experience this openness is that I feel most myself, most connected to the world - I have enough space in my mind and body to resonate, and I feel most free to grow.
Or as
recently said poignantly“Curiosity is my brand. I believe it reflects a relationship with a benign evolutionary force.”
I couldn’t agree more. Yet, for a long time, though, I found this super challenging.
Maybe this is you as well: Others seem to be able to settle - on an idea, a way of being, a persona, a belief, a job, or a passion - and to you, all these things are far more fluid. It’s not that you lack commitment or focus; it’s that your soul seems wired to resist closure. You need to explore, to experiment, to remain in motion. While others find comfort in stability, you may find it in the act of questioning, in the process of becoming.
For a long time, this fluidity seemed like a flaw or a phase.
But it was, and still is, an essential part of who I am.
To stay in the open-endedness is to honor that part of ourselves.
Interestingly, according to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, what typically causes emotional disorders is overconfidence in our dogmatic interpretations of the world.
Open-endedness is not a mindset - it’s a way of being in and with the world. It’s resisting the pressure to finalize, to define, to pin down. It’s embracing the messiness of life and finding beauty in the unresolved. It’s the recognition that growth happens in the in-between spaces, the cracks, as Bayo Akomolafé would say, in the moments of uncertainty and transition. Open-endedness is staying present to what is, while remaining curious about what could be. And perhaps most importantly, open-endedness is relational - it’s engaging with the world in a way that allows for resonance, for connection, for the unexpected. It’s not rejecting answers altogether, but holding them lightly, knowing that they are provisional, temporary, and always subject to revision.
Open-endedness is exploration, practice and ongoing inquire.
Life itself can become that practice ground, in which we embrace that we are never “there”, but always in the preliminary, in the trial-and-error of not-knowing.
And again, I am not saying open-endings is all there is, or that there should be no solutions at all. If I want to eat healthier, I want someone who knows about health to offer me a solution. Same goes for becoming fitter, or for building a house - anything largely mechanical. And building a house is different from losing weight or getting fitter. The later has some mechanics, but it also has many unknown, unpinnable, unquantifiable, almost mysterious layers to it.
While we think we can figure out the mechanical part - especially in academia - we have taken it a step too far. Our mechanistic philosophies have convinced us that all things are just that, which clearly they are not. Inner development, personal growth, our psychology, who we are and who we are becoming - none of there are mechanical. They might include a few mechanisms, but not at the core. That’s why the last self-help book you read improved the author’s life by a million, yet didn’t do a thing for you.
“This philosophy, known as holism, explains why I get different results each time I bake bread in my own kitchen, even using exactly the same recipe.” Lisa Feldman Barrett
The reason you should refuse to focus on methods, tools and solutions is that joy and true growth in life comes from creating these methods, tools and solutions. As you will find, testing new techniques, forging your own path, and “figuring it out” are deeply spiritual experiences.
Now, having laid the groundwork (and if you haven’t read the last two essays, here and here, I highly recommend).
Practical Philosophy
Allowing open-endedness to be is - and this won’t surprise those who have read my essays for a while - what I discovered through practicing philosophy.
Philosophy has in its core always been the tool for going toolless, the solution for avoiding solutions, the never-ending question. And if you did it “right,” it wasn’t a tool or a solution at all. Rather, it was a way of life, as Pierre Hadot famously pointed out.
According to the French philosopher Pierre Hadot, philosophy, at its core, isn’t limited to the analytic philosophy that we mostly find today, nor about abstract theories or rigid systems of thought.
Instead, it is a way of life - a set of practices aimed at transforming how we see and live in the world. For Hadot, philosophy was about askēsis, a Greek term meaning spiritual exercises or practices. These exercises - meditation, dialogue, self-examination - were not meant to provide answers but to cultivate a way of being that keeps us open to inquiry, to wonder, and to the mystery of existence.
When I came across his work, it deeply resonated with my own experience of open-endedness. He argues that ancient philosophers like the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics were not concerned with constructing dogmatic systems but with helping individuals live more authentically and harmoniously. They understood that life isn’t a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced. This is the essence of practical philosophy: it refrains from offering easy answers and instead invites us to live with questions, to remain present to life as it unfolds.
Practicing philosophy helps us to bring our ways of knowing, being and acting in resonance with our ecos (our home, which could be our mind-body, our physical home as well as the ecosystems we are part of).
Michel Foucault, in his later work, builds on this idea by exploring the concept of care of the self. Just as for Hadot, for Foucault, philosophy was about transforming oneself through practices.
These practices were never limited to a solitary pursuit but a communal one. They were meant to be relational. Foucault acknowledged (perhaps not in these exacts words) the relational nature of the world, our entanglement, co-creation and intra-action with it and that we are becoming through those entanglements with others and the world.
This relational dimension is crucial though to open-endedness. Because it’s through that relationality that things are open-ended in the first place, that we are open systems that detangle and re-entangle constantly.
The practices aren’t meant to be separate from everyday life. But life itself is that practice. And that practice is what some (myself included) refer to as “living philosophically”: constantly inquiring, exploring, staying in the liminal space of now-knowing, of uncertainty. Because it is only in that space, that we can truly resonate with the world. And to be in resonance is to be healthy.
When we allow ourselves to stay in the space of questions, we create the conditions for resonance - for those moments of deep connection and alignment that feel both personal and universal. Resonance, as Hartmut Rosa describes it, is not just a feeling but a way of being in the world. It’s in that openness that we can tune into what feels alive and meaningful, and allowing that to guide our actions and choices (I will say more to this another time).
In that space solutions exist. But they exist not in their finality, but are acknowledged in their incompleteness.
Martha Nussbaum would agree I think. In her work on the fragility of goodness, she argues that a good life is not one of certainty or control but one of vulnerability and openness to the unexpected. For her, its in this unpredictability where the richness of human life lies, in its capacity to surprise and challenge us.
Open-Endedness as a Relational Practice
Open-endedness, then, is not just a mindset - it’s a relational practice that involves engaging with the world in a way that allows for resonance, for connection, for the unexpected. This relational aspect is central to practical philosophy.
The relational dimension is also what makes open-endedness so vital to personal growth.
As I mentioned earlier, the joy of life doesn’t lie in following someone else’s methods, tools, or solutions but in creating our own - even if that “someone else” is who we were five years ago. Figuring things out is a deeply spiritual experience and, to me, the only path to a meaningful life. And it’s the essence of practical philosophy: it’s not providing answers but cultivating the capacity to live with questions and with that to embrace and resonate with the messiness of life in all its facets.
When I began writing these essays about solutions and tools a few weeks ago, I didn’t anticipate that it would lead me straight into the heart of philosophy. The topic of solutions, tools (and methods) has been deeply significant to me ever since I started researching relational philosophies and it has also been a focus of my academic research for some time. You can read a recent publication here.
Writing these essays turned out to be a revealing process. It was only through putting my thoughts into words that I realized why I am so deeply in love with -and devoted to - philosophy as a practice. It’s so meaningful to me, because this open-ended space I have been describing is where I find myself in most of waking life. This is my comfort zone. This is where I strive. In constant exploration. At the same time, in a world that seems to be fixated on answers and endpoints, I’ve often felt alone and alienated, like this was something I needed to fix. With finding philosophy, I suddenly noticed that I don’t need fixing. What a revelation :)
Of course, I wasn’t alone in writing these words (as we never truly are). One particularly meaningful conversation happened a few days ago during an ecological inquiry session with the wonderful
, and Evva. The podcast episode from that discussion will be out in a couple of weeks - I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s available.
i loved reading this & my soul needed it. as someone who has felt stuck by “figuring things out” (& following others’ methods), your essay has opened up new perspectives - thank you
It would perhaps be useful to read this description of what constitutes the self.
It should be understood that the karmas or habit patterns of every individual are effective at every level: physical, emotional, mental, unconscious, subconscious, conscious, waking, dreaming, and sleeping. And those karmas extend beyond the individual body-mind to include otheres, objects, and environments on every level, visible (or gross) and invisible (or subtle), known and unknown - past, present, and future.
Therefore the beginning of Wisdom requires, as a matter of preparation, the purification or release of attention from this karmic self-bond, the stable development of true psycho-physical equanimity , and the magnification of free energy and attention.
Without such stable psycho-physical equanimity it is impossible to even clearly see what is before ones eyes.