No. 2 (2025): Life Anyway - Constellations of How We Choose to Live

Editorial Note

Writing about life is not easy. Especially about the ordinary, simple, good life - without pathos, without grand words. About the fact that life continues despite. Despite pain, despite loss, despite the diagnosis, despite death. Despite not going where we hoped to go, despite someone leaving, despite something ending irreversibly. And yet - it is precisely this despite that becomes a place of meaning, an act of creation, and a constellation of chosen attitudes. We find freedom in eating sprats, in the smell of the forest, in conversation, in the quiet after a day that did not unfold the way we expected, in everydayness. In the fact that someone finishes their studies - despite. That someone begins again after forty - despite. That we still try to live well and authentically - despite. Life does not fulfil expectations; it asks for our response. And perhaps this is why we so often cover simple truths with philosophy. Because it is easier to speak of Being than to admit that life is sometimes simply difficult? And yet one can live well despite — and that is precisely why it makes sense. From a mother’s first word to Ozzy’s final chord — in all of it there is gratitude, presence, and an everyday choice rather than struggle. And that is enough.

We hope that the second issue of Existential Analysis and the Phenomenology of Life (ISSN 3071-978X), will become a space for reflections on living well despite - on choosing one’s attitude and on providing an answer until the very end.

Warm regards,
Dorota Draczyńska & Agnieszka Nowakowska
Editor-in-Chief & Chair of the Editorial Board

19.12.2025