Reclaiming Life Force

An introduction to a personal philosophy in progress

Lately, I’ve been waking up to the violence around me — and in me. Not only the obvious kind that fills newsfeeds, but the quiet daily version that hides inside politeness, self-protection, and the structures we call “normal.”

The word violence comes from vis — force, energy, vitality. That means violence and life share a common root. The difference is direction. Life force moves toward creation; violence bends that force toward domination or negation. The same energy that reaches out to protect can also close down to control.

For most of my life, I was trained to see only the act, not the life behind it. To be helpful, agreeable, to secure belonging — those were the “good” expressions of energy. To raise my voice or set a boundary were “bad.” But both impulses are the same current of life trying to move through the body.

I’ve begun working with this awareness through a simple four-step process — a kind of personal laboratory for truth-telling.

  1. Slow the labeling reflex. When a reaction rises, pause before calling it good or bad. Ask: what life is trying to happen here?
  2. Feel the shape of the energy before the story. Let anger, fear, or grief be sensations first, not moral verdicts. What are they guarding?
  3. Loosen the moral categories. Morality often protects hierarchy more than humanity. Compassion begins where certainty ends.
  4. Stay curious in relationship. When another’s life force collides with mine, can I sense the need beneath their act — not to excuse harm, but to meet life with life?

Each of these steps is its own practice, and each deserves a deeper dive. Future essays will explore them in turn: how to interrupt the reflex to judge, how to feel energy without collapsing into story, how to untangle inherited moral codes, and how to stay open in the intimate heat of real relationship.

For now, I’m sitting with the question: what would it mean to live without shrinking or dominating — to let life move cleanly through me, even when it shakes the world a little?