I want my life to feel like something.

In the cold morning light, overcast with grey clouds that threatened rain, I stuck Philip Larkin’s ‘Aubade’ to the bottom of my computer screen. It’s a print out of the poem that I’ve had for some time, so the edges are slightly dirty, and the paper is crumpled. It has occupied a space in my surroundings at work for years, whether it be at the front of notebook, blu-tacked to a wall, or anywhere else that I can easily access it.

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain edges will grow light.

Till then I see what’s really always there:

Unresting death, a while day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

- Excerpt from Philip Larkin (1977) Aubade

It’s not a poem that offers comfort, but I like it because it doesn’t. Admittedly, I am in a maudlin mood as I write this, and there’s a lingering melancholy about the day as I grieve the passing of a beloved colleague and note the ambivalence I feel towards others I still have to smile at. In the midst of that cacophony of emotion, there’s something strangely reassuring about a poem that refuses to flatter its reader, and I’m drawn to the way that Larkin strips away the distractions we often guiltily use to shield ourselves from uncomfortable truths. He forces us to confront one of the few certainties of existence: that our lives are finite.

Most of the time, we succeed in forgetting this. It remains an abstraction. We bury the thought beneath deadlines, domestic routines, shopping lists, and social obligations. We use these as excuses. Without being morbid, I possess and deeply feel an awareness of this that remains at the front of my mind, waiting hushed beneath the surface but usually emerging in those sleepless moments, as Larkin marks at 4:00am, when there’s nothing left to distract me from myself. I know I’m not the only one that has experienced this.

That’s why the poem remains pinned above my desk. It exposes the unsettling distance that can develop between living and merely existing.

Mortality is frightening, but what frightens me more is the possibility of drifting through decades without ever feeling fully awake to my own experience. The prospect of reaching the end of life and discovering that I spent most of it operating on autopilot strikes me as a uniquely modern tragedy, although I know that it isn’t. There are thousands of years of history of people who simply existed and then passed.

Routine is partly responsible for this. Humans like routines, and they celebrate routines because it’s practical predictability. It creates stability, encourages discipline, and allows society to function. I like routine, too, but I also think that routine possesses a darker aspect that’s rarely acknowledged: given enough time, repetition dulls perception. It’s very easy to allow days to blend together.

Monday becomes indistinguishable from Thursday. We spend the weekends thinking about what the next Monday might bring.

Entire months pass in what feels, retrospectively, like a single afternoon. We talk about how we can’t believe it’s that date in the year already or how quickly time flies.

We become experts at managing our lives while slowly ceasing to inhabit them.

There’s a sadness in that transformation because it’s rarely dramatic. Life doesn’t collapse, and nothing necessarily goes wrong. Careers progress, and bills are paid. Relationships continue. That’s precisely what makes it so dangerous. One day you realise that your primary relationship isn’t with the world itself, or nature, or anything that thrills you and brings sets your soul alight - it’s with your calendar. You’ve been spending more time organising your life than experiencing it; even when you’re physically there, you’re just thinking about the next thing you need to tick off your list.

I suspect this is why so many people become captivated by art, literature, philosophy, music, and ideas. I know that’s why I adore it. These pursuits are usually dismissed as luxuries, but I will always argue they perform the essential function of interrupting the machinery. A great novel can alter the way a person sees themselves, and a piece of music can transform an ordinary evening into something unforgettable. A line of poetry can remain lodged in the mind for years, surfacing unexpectedly during periods of grief or joy.

Contemporary life is remarkably efficient at capturing consciousness and directing it elsewhere. We live among notifications, algorithms, recommendations, and endless streams of information designed to occupy every spare moment. Silence has become uncomfortable, and stillness feels unproductive, and the result is an existence that can appear full while paradoxically feeling void. We consume more than any generation before us, but so many people carry a persistent sense of starvation that they don’t dare to admit to. That’s not what the highlight reel promised. Starving for meaning isn’t something that anyone wants to confront.

When I say that I want life to feel like something, I don’t mean that I want perpetual happiness. Happiness is fleeting and often not what people think it is. I mean something closer to intensity.

I want to feel connected to the experience of being alive. I want to notice things, remaining vulnerable to beauty, curiosity, and wonder. I want to encounter ideas that challenge me and conversations that linger long after they’ve ended, either making me laugh warmly at the memory of them or make me think more deeply about a perspective I didn’t take into consideration before. I want to feel moved instead of occupied.

There is, I think, something profoundly romantic about paying attention, in the older sense of the word, which means that it’s a refusal to accept that the world has become ordinary. The people I admire most possess that ability: a friend telling me about her new bag designs, my father telling me about wandering Vienna, or the neighbour who excitedly tells me about his new job opportunity. They move through life as if astonishment remains possible. They’ve preserved their capacity for fascination, and faced with a piece of art, a difficult question, a landscape, or another person’s mind, they continue to experience genuine curiosity.

In the new part of town that I now work, a lot of people have described the area pejoratively. I force myself to spend my lunches walking around, and I look upwards. There’s incredible architecture, the most beautiful Anglican Minster, incredible Victorian gravestones and markers, the ruins of an abbey, wild flowers growing through cracks, and I found a bench, made from a fallen tree, that was made an artist that I work alongside in the theatre. It’s not dirty or degenerate if you can see past the initial issues. There’s charm here; people just need to be open to it.

That openness carries risks, though. Feeling deeply inevitably invites disappointment. It’s much easier to become cynical, detached, or distracted instead of fighting to see the light. Cynicism often masquerades as wisdom because it protects us from vulnerability, but it only achieves safety because it shrinks the world.

Remaining emotionally and intellectually engaged with existence is an act of courage because it’s staying receptive to everything we could possibly lose.

I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s why we recognise one another so easily when we encounter fellow seekers. They’re the people who stop to discuss books in corridors, and they send essays to friends at midnight, or they become visibly excited about obscure ideas. What unites them is a refusal to accept that survival is sufficient.

Beneath all of this lies a simple desire to feel the world pressing back against us. We want experiences that wake us from the trance of routine and remind us that we’re participants rather than spectators in our own existence. When I glance at ‘Aubade’, fighting for my attention against the glow of my work screen, I’m reminded that the point isn’t just to survive the passage of time.

One day, that printout of ‘Aubade’ will finally disintegrate. The edges will fray completely, and the paper will tear. The ink will fade, or it’ll become too thumbed to read properly. I suspect I’ll replace it with another copy and pin it back where it’s easy to see. It doesn’t remind me that I am going to die; it reminds me that I am still alive.

While that remains true, I want to keep looking up.

I want to keep noticing.

I want to keep gathering poems, conversations, ideas and moments that refuse to leave me unchanged. I hope you do, too.

For however long we’re here, letting life feel like something seems good reason enough.